‘Being Involved in Community Based Research; Lessons from the Objective 1 South Yorkshire Context’

This article reports the findings of a qualitative investigation into community based research within the Objective 1 Programme, South Yorkshire. Based upon semi-structured interviews with participants undertaking community based research and then developing action plans based upon the research findings, the study highlights the issues associated with involvement in such research from participant’s perspectives. Beginning with an examination of involvement in research and then moving on to discuss the wider issues of involvement in regeneration and partnerships, the article argues that despite the increased policy focus on bottom-up approaches, involvement is complex and conceptualised in a number of different ways and therefore requires further investigation

Locally Directed Policy and the Fostering of Social Capital Within Regeneration: The Case of Objective 1 South Yorkshire

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study on the impact of community-based research within the South Yorkshire Objective 1 Programme. Based upon semi-structured interviews with participants who conducted community-based research, the study highlights the social capital impacts arising from the use of such research within development practice particularly in terms of the formation of networks and the development of trust. Although community-based research can enhance social capital, the study demonstrates that this is a complex process and as such is not an easy tool to harness and use within the policy-making process

Gender and Competition

In almost all European Union countries, the gender wage gap is increasing across the wages distribution. In this lecture I briefly survey some recent studies aiming to explain why apparently identical women and men receive such different returns and focus especially on those incorporating psychological factors as an explanation of the gender gap. Research areas with high potential returns to further analysis are identified. Several examples from my own recent experimental work with Patrick Nolen are also presented. These try to distinguish between the role of nature and nurture in affecting behavioural differences between men and women that might lead to gender wage gaps.glass ceiling, experimental economics, personality differences, behaviour

The Glass Ceiling in Europe: Why Are Women Doing Badly in the Labour Market?

Average gender pay gaps have absorbed the interest of economists for many years. More recently studies have begun to explore the degree to which observed gender wage gaps might differ across the wages distribution. The stylised facts from these studies, summarised in the first part of the paper, are that the gender pay gap in Europe is typically increasing across the wages distribution. This finding - more pronounced in the private than the public sector - has been interpreted as a glass ceiling effect. The existence of this glass ceiling suggests that the average gender pay gap in Europe is mainly due to the gender gap towards the top of the wages distribution. What explains these stylised facts? We briefly outline some relevant hypotheses in the second part of the paper. A fundamental challenge for labour economists is to identify the extent to which these stylised facts are due to policies and institutions, discrimination, to other unobservable factors, or to fundamental differences between men and women. Finally, we briefly summarise the policy initiatives that might be introduced to deal with gender wage gaps.gender, discrimination, glass ceilings, sticky floors, quantile regression decompositions

Gender and Competition

In almost all European Union countries, the gender wage gap is increasing across the wages distribution. In this lecture I briefly survey some recent studies aiming to explain why apparently identical women and men receive such different returns and focus especially on those incorporating pyschological factors as an explanation of the gender gap. Research areas with high potential returns to further analysis are identified. Several examples from my own recent experimental work with Patrick Nolen are also presented. These try to distinguish between the role of nature and nurture in affecting behavioural differences between men and women that might lead to gender wage gaps.personality differences, experimental economics, glass ceiling

Solid state switch

Solid state switching circuit design to increase current capacity of low rated relay contact

Two physical characteristics of numerical apparent horizons

This article translates some recent results on quasilocal horizons into the language of $(3+1)$ general relativity so as to make them more useful to numerical relativists. In particular quantities are described which characterize how quickly an apparent horizon is evolving and how close it is to either equilibrium or extremality.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, conference proceedings loosely based on talk given at Theory Canada III (Edmonton, Alberta, 2007). V2: Minor changes in response to referees comments to improve clarity and fix typos. One reference adde

A Microfoundation for Increasing Returns in Human Capital Accumulation and the Under-Participation Trap

This paper considers educational investment, wages and hours of market work in an imperfectly competitive labour market with heterogeneous workers and home production. It investigates the degree to which there might be both underemployment in the labour market and underinvestment in education. A central insight is that the ex-post participation decision of workers endogeneously generates increasing marginal returns to education. Although equilibrium implies underinvestment in education, optimal policy is not to subsidise education. Instead it is to subsidise labour market participation which we argue might be efficiently targeted as state provided childcare support.Education, home production, hours of work, imperfect competition.