Durable Purchases over the Later Life Cycle

We investigate life‐cycle patterns of demand for services from household durables using UK panel data. We take careful account of prices, demographics, labour supply and health. Demand for consumer electronics rises with age, while the demand for household appliances is flat. These findings contrast with the well documented decline in non‐durable consumption at older ages, and suggest that studies that estimate the overall discount rate from nondurable consumption may underestimate consumer patience and the savings required to fund retirement. We also find important non‐separabilities between the demand for durables, labour supply and health status.     

The UK Gender Pay Gap 1997–2015: What Is the Role of the Public Sector?

The Labour Force Survey is used to examine the influence of sector on the UK gender pay gap 1997–2015. The assessment is twofold: first comparing gender pay gaps within sectors and second through identifying the contribution of the concentration of women in the public sector to the overall gender pay gap. The long‐term narrowing of the gender pay gap, which predominately reflects relative improvements in women's productivity‐related characteristics, is found to stall in 2010 within each sector. This is considered in the context of claims that public sector austerity represents a critical turning point in progress toward gender equality at work.     

An Attention‐Based View of Family Firm Adaptation to Discontinuous Technological Change: Exploring the Role of Family CEOs' Noneconomic Goals

Recent studies show that managerial attention is a particularly important precursor of established firms' responses to discontinuous technological change. However, little is known about the factors that shape managerial attention‐response patterns. Our qualitative study investigates how the attention of family firm chief executive officers (CEOs) to discontinuous technological shifts, the interpretation and decision‐making processes associated with these changes, and ultimately organizations' responses are affected by CEOs' noneconomic goals. Based on seven longitudinal case studies in the German consumer goods industry, the paper induces a process model that extends the findings of the literature on the attention‐based view and helps to explain heterogeneity in family firms' adaptation to discontinuous technological change. This study shows that the family CEO's specific noneconomic goals—such as power and control, transgenerational value, the maintenance of family reputation, the continuance of personal ties, or personal affect associated with the family business—determine whether the CEO assesses an emerging technology as relevant enough to warrant a reaction from the firm. Moreover, the family CEO's noneconomic goals constrain the set of considered responses. The outcome of this sensemaking process determines the organization's response. For instance, in the specific context of this study, the goal of “family power and control” entailed an immediate interpretation of the focal trend as important for maintaining influence, and resulted in an unconstrained set of responses and, ultimately, high innovation in the new domain. Over time, family CEOs might reevaluate the emerging trend based on their goals and adapt organizational moves accordingly. The paper identifies and discusses how ambiguities and dilemmas may arise during this process. Our findings contribute to the literature on adaptation to discontinuous technological change and to family firm research.     

A computable general equilibrium model of the southern region of Taiwan: the impact of the Tainan science-based industrial park

This paper examines the impact of productivity on pay within academia, drawing upon a detailed dataset of academics from five old established universities. Results outline the importance of publication; grant receipt and teaching quality in the determination of pay. A large financial penalty to time out of the profession is revealed, which, with productivity variables, explains away the gender salary gap. The relationship between teaching and research is investigated, and we find some evidence in support of the hypothesis that productive researchers are successful teachers. Results on reservation salary suggest that the best academics are willing to stay within the profession.     

Reports of child protection and safeguarding concerns in sport and leisure settings: an analysis of English local authority data between 2010 and 2015

The abuse of children in sport has received considerable attention in recent years not least in the UK, where high-profile disclosures of abuse by former sports professionals have led to several independent inquiries and reviews. Subsequent public and media interest has focused on the potential scale of child abuse in sport. This scrutiny has highlighted how little data there are in this area, in a sector that thrives on statistics. This paper analyses official reports of child abuse in sport and leisure settings received by local authorities (LAs) in England during a five-year period (2010–2015) across a range of factors. Findings show that English LAs have varying capacity to provide data on sport/leisure contexts; receive substantively different volumes of reports of child abuse in sport/leisure; and record reports of sexual abuse in sport at higher levels than other forms of abuse. These data suggest that abuse in English sport is significantly underreported but that reports per annum increased over the period.     

Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest

An agroecosystem is constrained by environmental possibility and social choices, mainly in the form of government policies. To be sustainable, an agroecosystem requires production systems that are resilient to natural stressors such as disease, pests, drought, wind and salinity, and to human constructed stressors such as economic cycles and trade barriers. The world is becoming increasingly reliant on concentrated exporting agroecosystems for staple crops, and vulnerable to national and local decisions that affect resilience of these production systems. We chronicle the history of the United States staple crop agroecosystem of the Midwest region to determine whether sustainability is part of its design, or could be a likely outcome of existing policies particularly on innovation and intellectual property. Relative to other food secure and exporting countries (e.g. Western Europe), the US agroecosystem is not exceptional in yields or conservative on environmental impact. This has not been a trade-off for sustainability, as annual fluctuations in maize yield alone dwarf the loss of caloric energy from extreme historic blights. We suggest strategies for innovation that are responsive to more stakeholders and build resilience into industrialized staple crop production.     

Age and Work‐Related Health: Insights from the UK Labour Force Survey

Data from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) are used to examine two methodological issues in the analysis of the relationship between age and work‐related health. First, the LFS is unusual in that it asks work‐related health questions to those who are not currently employed. This facilitates a more representative analysis than that which is constrained to focus only on those currently in work. Second, information in the LFS facilitates a comparison of work‐related health problems that stem from current employment to a more encompassing measure that includes those related to a former job. We find that accounting for each of these sources of bias increases the age work‐related health risk gradient, and suggest that ignoring such effects will underestimate the work‐related health implications of current policies to extend working lives.