Recent theoretical developments relating to investment under uncertainty have highlighted the importance of irreversibility for the timing of investment expenditures and their expected returns. This has subsequently stimulated a growing empirical literature which examines uncertainty and...

This paper focuses on the determinants of aggregate investment spending in the UK for the industrial and commercial company (ICC) sector. It complements recent work by Cuthbertson and Gasparro (1995), who study an augmented Tobin's q model of investment in the manufacturing sector. Important...

This paper examines whether subjective expectations of unemployment are reliable indicators of the probability of becoming unemployed, and investigates their association with wage growth. We find that workers’ fears of unemployment are increased by their previous unemployment experience and by...

There are two findings that are conspicuous in almost all studies of individual wage determination. First, standard cross-section wage equations rarely account for more than half of the total variance in earnings between individuals. Second, there are large and persistent inter-industry wage...

In the 1997 and 1998 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, workers are asked to assess their level of job security in terms of the probability of becoming unemployed within the next year. We examine whether these perceptions of insecurity are purely subjective or are systematically...

In 1996 and 1997, approximately 1 in 10 British workers thought that it was either likely or very likely that they would lose their job within 12 months. Increased job insecurity has been touted as a possible cause for the decline of equilibrium unemployment in Britain and the United States...

This paper undertakes an analysis of the motivating factors cited by the self-employed in the UK as reasons for choosing self-employment. Very limited previous research has addressed the question of why individuals report that they have chosen self-employment. Two questions are addressed using...

A range of alternative empirical definitions of informal activity have been employed in the literature. Choice of definition is often dictated by data availability. Different definitions may imply very different conceptual understandings of informality. This paper investigates the degree of...

Developing further the accumulating evidence that self-employment attracts optimists, this paper investigates the relationship between earnings and prior optimism. It finds that self-employed optimists earn less than self-employed realists. Amongst employees, optimists earn more. These results...