This paper uses a structural model to address the question of why home-owners with large mortgage debt work longer hours than those without such debt. We consider whether this is due to lower net wealth or to capital market imperfections, including mortgage constraints that depend on current...

This paper concerns the decomposition of income risk into permanent and transitory components using repeated cross-section data on income and consumption. Our focus is on the detection of changes in the magnitudes of variances of permanent and transitory risks. A new approximation to the optimal...

We develop a new approach to the decomposition of income risk within a nonstationary model of intertemporal choice. The approach allows for changes in income risk over the life-cycle and with the business cycle. It requires only repeated cross-section data and can allow for mixtures of...

This paper examines trends in household consumption and saving behaviour in each of the last three recessions in the UK. We identify several dimensions along which the most recent recession (the so-called 'Great Recession') has been different from those that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s....

This paper examines trends in household consumption and saving behaviour in each of the last three recessions in the UK. The 'Great Recession' has been different from those that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. It has been both deeper and longer, but also the composition of the cutbacks in...

"Other countries have already privatised their job placement systems to a greater extent than Germany has. This concerns such different welfare state regimes as Australia and Great Britain on the one hand and the Netherlands - and more recently also Belgium and Denmark - on the other hand....

"Employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits and active labor market policy are Janus-faced institutions. On the one hand they are devices of insurance against labor market risk that provide income and employment security. On the other hand they influence the capacities of labor...

"Institutional changes in the governance of employment services were the starting point of comprehensive labour market and social policy reforms - the so-called Hartz-reforms (2003-2005) - in Germany. Particularly with the Hartz IV reform in 2005 Germany's status- and occupation-oriented social...

Other countries have already privatised their job placement systems to a greater extent than Germany has. This concerns such different welfare state regimes as Australia and Great Britain on the one hand and the Netherlands - and more recently also Belgium and Denmark - on the other hand....

Employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits and active labor market policy are Janus-faced institutions. On the one hand they are devices of insurance against labor market risk that provide income and employment security. On the other hand they influence the capacities of labor...