Purpose – The paper aims to show that active labour market policies in Scotland over a nine-year period have failed to meet key policy objectives. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses the UK national online manpower information system (NOMIS) to conduct a detailed statistical...

We use fourteen waves of the German panel data to ask whether individuals, after life and labour market events, return to some baseline wellbeing level. Although the strongest life satisfaction effect is often at the time of the event, significant lag and lead effects are present. Men are more...

This paper examines the factors that influence transitions into self-employment, paying particular attention to gender differences. We find that: (i) men are more responsive to the wage differential between wage/salaried employment and self-employment; (ii) liquidity constraints are more...

In this paper we use cointegration techniques to test the long-run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis for nine Drachma exchange rates within the European currency area. The results support the long-run PPP hypothesis only in the cases of Portugal, Spain and the UK, as these countries were...

There is a great deal of variation in the levels of entrepreneurship, or rates of self-employment, across the regions of Britain. Over the period 1983-1995, average self-employment in the North, Scotland, and the West Midlands was respectively 25%, 15%, and 15% lower than the national average,...

Exploiting the theoretical parallels between the matching of workers to jobs in the labour market and the matching of individuals in the marriage market, we use a search theoretic model of marriage formation and dissolution to examine the effect of divorce costs on both decisions. By introducing...

Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we examine the link between income and subjective well-being. We find that, for the whole sample of nineteen European countries, although income is positively correlated with both happiness and life satisfaction, reference income exerts a...

This paper uses a panel approach to examine the effect that the government-policy environment has on the level of entrepreneurship. Specifically, the authors investigate whether marginal income tax rates and bankruptcy exemptions influence rates of entrepreneurship. Whereas previous work in the...

We look for evidence of adaptation in wellbeing to major life events using eighteen waves of British panel data. Adaptation to marriage, divorce, birth of child and widowhood appears to be rapid and complete; this is not so for unemployment. These findings are remarkably similar to those in...