Austerity measures in response to Eurozone crisis have tended to be conceived, debated, and implemented as if only the technical parameters of budget management mattered. But policies that impose budgetary hardships on citizens, whether in the form of increased taxes or cuts to public spending...

The comparative study of debt and fiscal consolidation has acquired a new focus in the wake of the global financial crisis. This leads us to re-evaluate the literature on fiscal consolidation that flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. The conventional approach segments episodes of fiscal change...

This paper analyses the determinants of trust in a pool of 33 European countries over the period 2002-2010. We find that income inequality is negatively related with trust when we analyse pooled data of individuals, which is a well established result if one focuses on crosscountry differences....

This paper uses novel measures of individual differences that produce new insights about student inputs into the (higher) education production function. The inputs examined are lecture attendance and additional study-hours. The data were collected through a websurvey that the authors designed....

Smoking bans in the workplace and public places are now ubiquitous. While indices of such controls are commonly included in econometric models, there exists little theory that validates or analyzes them. This paper first proposes a theoretical model of maximizing behaviour on the part of smokers...

While the empirical literature on smoking bans is extensive, little theory has been developed. This paper examines the welfare impact of smoking bans in an economy where smokers’ utility is reduced by a workplace/public place ban. The government has two instruments - increasing the price...

A frequent refrain during recent debates on welfare cuts has related to the need to “protect the vulnerable”. However, it is far from clear that a consensus exists on which individuals or groups are to be included under this heading with consequent lack of clarity for the policy implications...

This paper provides a general overview of trends and patterns in divorce in the present-day western world, focusing especially on the interaction between legal and behavioural aspects of union dissolution. The account is written from a sociological rather than a legal perspective. Its purpose is...

This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental education and income on child health. We are particularly concerned about spurious correlation arising from the potential endogeneity of parental income and education. Using an instrumental variables approach,...

Comparing self-assessed indicators of subjective outcomes such as health, work disability, political efficacy, job satisfaction, etc. across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by the fact that different groups use systematically different response scales. Anchoring vignettes...