By considering the case of rural South India, this study analyses whether individual skills and personality traits are able to facilitate labour market mobility of disadvantaged groups in the presence of constraining social structures. We use an individual panel dataset built on two household...

Laboratory experiments are a widely used methodology for advancing causal knowledge in the physical and life sciences. With the exception of psychology, the adoption of laboratory experiments has been much slower in the social sciences, although during the last two decades, the use of lab...

The more conservative among us believe that "Big Data is a fad that will soon fade out" and they may in fact be partially right. By contrast, others - especially those who dispassionately note that digitization is only now beginning to deliver its payload - may beg to differ. We argue that all...

In a bold and risky political move the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras called for a referendum on June 27 2015 quitting ongoing negotiations with Greece's creditors in Brussels. The referendum framed as a yes or no question asked the Greek voters to decide whether or not they approve or...

On February 20 2015 Irish Premier Enda Kenny confirmed that a "yes-no" referendum on same sex marriage would be held on May 22 of the same year. A yes vote would legalise same sex marriage in Ireland. As the Irish premier put it, the vote was about "tolerance, respect and sensitivity". The...

Suppose an agency awards a fixed number of prizes to applicants in different categories such that the applicant-to-winner ratio is constant by category. It is demonstrated in a simple theoretical model that the number of awards in a category will typically be positively related to the degree of...

The balance between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of information is altered when scientific research comes into play, because of its inherent needs and societal function. This paper argues that, for research purposes, microdata should be characterised as a public good. The...

Status considerations with respect to consumption give rise to negative externalities because individuals do not take into account that their decisions affect the relative consumption position of others. Further, status concerns create incentives for excessive labour supply in competitive...

The paper investigates whether unionisation has a spillover effect on wellbeing by comparing non-members in union and non-union workplaces. To this end, it adapts the social custom model of trade unions and goes on to conduct empirical analyses using linked employer-employee data and alternative...