A large fraction of domestically abused women report that their partners interfere with their participation in education and employment. As of yet, mainstream economics has not dealt in any systematic way with this phenomenon and its implications for welfare policy. This paper puts forward a...

This paper considers how optimal education and tax policy depends on the risk properties of human capital. It is demonstrated that a key feature of human capital investments is whether they increase or decrease wage risk. In a benchmark model it is shown that this feature alone determines...

This paper considers the potential impact of welfare benefits on the partnership status of women in the UK. Using recent policy reforms to identify the response rate I find that a £100/week welfare benefit “partnership penalty” reduces the probability of a woman having a partner by seven...

Altruistic parents, who differ in income, make financial transfers to their children, who differ in ability. The children invest in post-compulsory education, subject to an endogenous credit constraint, and taking policy as given. There are two policy tools: a subsidy to those who participate in...

This paper considers whether labour market rigidities lead to more underground economic activities. This is suggested by aggregate cross-country data which show that underground economic activities are more strongly correlated with a commonly used index of employment protection than with...

This paper uses a particular school exit rule previously in effect in England and Wales that allowed students born within the first five months of the academic year to leave school one term earlier than those born later in the year. Focusing on women, we show that those who were required to stay...

Is unemployment the overwhelming determinant of domestic violence that many commentators expect it to be? The contribution of this paper is to examine, theoretically and empirically, how changes in unemployment affect the incidence of domestic abuse. The key theoretical prediction is that male...

Justification for policies to encourage investments in education, particularly for individuals at the lower end of the ability distribution, may be provided by behavioural economics. We present a prototypical model where individuals who are potentially loss averse around their expected outcome...

This paper considers how optimal education and tax policy depends on the risk properties of human capital. It is demonstrated that a key feature of human capital investments is whether they increase or decrease wage risk. In a benchmark model it is shown that this feature alone determines...