As we write, the world is still in the grips of a financial crisis. Germany was one of the first countries to bail out a bank in July 2007. Then, in September 2007, the United Kingdom (UK) witnessed a run on a building society, Northern Rock, and the subsequent widespread nationalization of its...

Much has been written on the diffusion of public management and regulatory reform tools. Available evidence suggests that cross-national policy diffusion is an increasingly significant phenomenon, especially in the European context. While internationalisation of policy discourses and expert...

Mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the football World Cup represent a special venue for the practice of risk management. This paper explores management of security risks in the case of two sporting mega-events, the London 2012 Olympic Games and the FIFA 2006 World Cup in Germany. The...

Open Method Co-ordination (OMC) has been treated in the literature as the Lazarus of European integration. Developed at the Lisbon Summit, it has led to the reincarnation of the European Union, both in terms of what it does and how it does it. No longer is the European Union to be centred around...

Globalisation is said to have diminished the capacity of states to regulate their economies. However, while a body of doctrine has developed concerning the need for capable, independent regulation, there is relative paucity of theoretical discussion concerning the nature of state regulatory...

Purpose: Unrealistic optimism is all around us, and it is a well-documented psychological phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to take a critical approach of the main research done in the area and to analyze the important impact that it has in many economic and managerial contexts. We also...

Subjects who overestimate their performance in experimental tasks unrelated to travel are less willing to insure against failing in the task and also less inclined to buy travel insurance. This suggests intrinsic optimism influences insurance demand and diminishes adverse selection

This article analyzes the political origins of differences in adherence to the fiscal framework of the European Union (EU). It shows how incentives to use fiscal policy for electoral purposes and limited budget transparency at the national level, combined with the need to respond to fiscal rules...

Between 1993 and April 1999 there was no minimum wage in the United Kingdom (except in agriculture). In this paper we study the effects of the introduction of a National Minimum Wage (NMW) in April 1999 on one heavily affected sector, the residential care homes industry. This sector contains a...

We examine the vertical transmission of overweight drawing upon a sample of English children, both adopted and non-adopted, and their families. Our results suggest strong evidence of an intergenerational association of overweight among adoptees, indicating transmission through cultural factors....