This paper investigates whether people's ability to withstand and adapt to one of the most important economic shocks - job loss - is determined early on in childhood. Using nationally representative longitudinal data that tracks almost 3,000 children into adulthood, we show that the negative...

Does the fear of being bullied in childhood affect people's resilience to adverse life events they may face in adulthood? The author investigates whether the 'scarring' effects are particularly damaging to individuals who lose their job.

Sixteen years into the transition, the problem of high joblessness has not been solved. Of the three explanations commonly discussed (i.e. ongoing reallocation; finished reallocation with redundant labour; wrong choice of institutional framework), we concentrated on the ongoing reallocation...

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigration, austerity, real wages and living standards, productivity and business,...

Real wages and living standards have taken a hard hit in the UK in the recent past. Real wages of the typical (median) UK worker have fallen by almost 10% since 2008 and median family incomes have significantly fallen for working age households. This recent experience is weaker than in the...

Contrary to popular belief, the incidence of domestic violence in Britain does not seem to have risen during the recession. But according to research by Jonathan Wadsworth and colleagues, men and women have experienced different risks of unemployment - and these have had contrasting effects on...

Barbara Petrongolo surveys the research evidence on the effectiveness of the 'sticks' and 'carrots' of active labour market policies.

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job matches that have a sustained detrimental effect on their wages and career...

The researchers note that there have been historically unprecedented falls in UK real wages since the start of the Great Recession. What's more, the long US experience of stagnant real wages (median real weekly earnings in the United States in 2013 were at about the same level as in 1979) might...

Barbara Petrongolo surveys the research evidence on the effectiveness of the 'sticks' and 'carrots' of active labour market policies.