What makes workers happy? Here we argue that pure 'rank' matters. It is currently believed that wellbeing is determined partly by an individual's absolute wage (say, 30,000 dollars a year) and partly by the individual's relative wage (say, 30,000 dollars compared to an average in the company or...

In recent years a number of studies have analysed the consequences of offshoring for developed economies in general and for the UK in particular. Nevertheless, there has been relatively little research on how individual workers in the UK respond to offshoring. Watson Wyatt conducted an extensive...

With the shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) pensions gathering momentum in the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is a renewed focus on what kind of pension DC members can expect in retirement. Will current DC pension plans be sufficient to provide an adequate...

In summer of 2013, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported a record of more than one million people aged 65 or more being in employment in the UK. This represents a doubling relative to 1992 (when ONS began recording this statistic) and means almost one in ten people aged over 65 are...

We study market reactions to the announcement of a company closing their defined benefit pension plan in the UK to future accrual. For a sample of 48 plan closures, observed between 2006 and 2013, the empirical tests show a relatively muted market reaction on average. Although estimated returns...

One of the famous questions in social science is whether money makes people happy. We offer new evidence by using longitudinal data on a random sample of Britons who receive medium-sized lottery wins of between Đ1000 and Đ120,000 (that is, up to approximately U.S. $200,000). When compared to...