Parallel Lives: Birth, Childhood and Adolescent Influences on Career Paths

This paper uses sequence methods and cluster analysis to create a typology of career paths for a cohort of British 29 year olds born in 1970. There are clear ‘types’ identified by these techniques including several paths dominated by various forms of non-employment. These types are strongly correlated with individual characteristics and parental background factors observed at birth, age ten and age sixteen. By estimating a multinomial logit model of career types we show how policy makers might identify early those young people likely to experience long term non-employment as adults, enabling better targeted preventative policy intervention.careers, cluster analysis, optimal matching

Measuring business growth : high growth firms and their contribution to employment in the UK

The Measuring Business Growth report is a comprehensive look at UK business growth over the past decade. It makes a powerful case that a small number of high-growth businesses are responsible for the lion's share of job creation and prosperity

THE EFFECT OF CONCUSSiON HISTORY ON POSITIONAL BALANCE ABILITY IN RUGBY UNION ATHLETES

Head traumas account for 29% of all injuries in professional rugby. Concussions are thought to have only a short-term effect on balance. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether concussion history affected a rugby team's ability to maintain balance and determine which sensory system was most affected. Thirty male academy rugby athletes separated into backs and forwards performed the m-CTSIB on the Biodex Balance SD system. The forwards, who had more rugby experience and concussions in comparison to the backs, produce substantially larger sway index scores (worse balance) in all four conditions. Useful future research could involve a longitudinal study which allowed baseline balance scores to be established and compared over time

Who creates the jobs?

Addresses Birch's hypothesis, made in 1979 and the subject of much debate since, that small businesses create the most new jobs, using the Office of National Statistics' new Business Structure Database and focusing on the 1998 cohort of new firms and their evolution up to 2008. Assesses: the size of the firms in the cohort; the distribution of jobs as firms moved between size bands; job creation trends in firms that survived with 20+ employees; and job creation by size band. Argues that the answer to the question of 'who creates the jobs?' depends on exactly how the question is framed

New business formation in a rapidly growing economy: The Irish experience

The extraordinary growth of the Irish economy since the mid-1990s - the 'Celtic Tiger' - has attracted a great deal of interest, commentary and research. Indeed, many countries look to Ireland as an economic development role model, and it has been suggested that Ireland might provide key lessons for other EU members as they seek to achieve the objectives set out in the Lisbon Agenda. Much of the discussion of Ireland's growth has focused on its possible triggers: the long term consequences of the late 1980s fiscal stabilisation; EU structural funds; education; wage moderation; and devaluation of the Irish punt. The industrial policy perspective has highlighted the importance of inflows of foreign direct investment, but a notable absence from the discourse on the 'Celtic Tiger' has been any mention of the role of new business venture creation and entrepreneurship. In this paper we use unpublished Irish VAT data for the years 1988 to 2004 to provide the first detailed look at national trends in business birth and death rates in Ireland over the 'take-off' period. We also use sub-national VAT data to shed light on spatial trends in new venture creation. Our overall conclusions are that new business formation made no detectable contribution to the acceleration of Ireland's growth in the late 1990s, although we do find evidence of spatial convergence in per capita business stocks

The effect of business or enterprise training on opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial skills of graduates and non-graduates in the UK

This paper attempts to overcome methodological challenges in demonstrating the effect of enterprise training on opportunity perception and entrepreneurial skills perception of trainees. A large scale sample of individuals in the UK, part of the 2007 GEMUK database, is utilised. Logistic regression shows that controlling for demographic effects, experience and attitudes, different types of training had different effects on opportunity perception and entrepreneurial skills perception. The results suggest that a combination of college-based training and work placements may provide a better all-round entrepreneurial capability for both graduates and non-graduates

Firm dynamics and job creation in the United Kingdom:1998–2013

This article is motivated by a very simple question – ‘what types of firms create the most jobs in the UK economy?’ One popular answer to this question has been High-Growth Firms (HGFs). These firms represent only a small minority – the ‘Vital 6%’ – of the UK business population yet, but have a disproportionate impact on job creation and innovation. We re-visit the discussion launched by the 2009 National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) reports, which identified the 6% figure and, using more recent data, confirm the headline conclusion for job creation: a small number of job-creating firms (mostly small firms) are responsible for a significant amount of net job creation in the United Kingdom. Adopting our alternative preferred analytical approach, which involves tracking the growth performance of cohorts of start-ups confirms this conclusion; however, we find an even smaller number of job-creating firms are responsible for a very significant proportion of job creation. We conclude by considering the question – ‘what are the implications for policy choices?’