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It is a common assumption to believe that encouraging pro environmental behavior (PEB) in one domain would lead to increased PEB in other domains (best-case scenario) or just be restricted to the initial targeted domain (worst-case scenario). Evidence from a rapidly growing literature on moral licensing suggests that interventions targeting behavioral change could lead to an even worse scenario, with individuals starting to underperform in one domain, as a compensation for their good performance in other domains. We propose to study the dynamic of PEBs when individuals are exposed to a specific nudge (priming) via an original experiment designed to capture actual behavior. We found that priming could increase PEB, but does not thwart moral licensing. Primed individuals end up doing worse than non-primed individual under a moral licensing condition. A more comprehensive view of the mechanisms underlying behavioral change is essential to support sustainable policies.

The lockdown imposed following the COVID-19 pandemic of spring 2020 dramatically changed the daily lives and routines of millions of people worldwide. We analyze how such changes contributed to patterns of activity within the household using a novel survey of Italian, British, and American families in lockdown. A high percentage report disruptions in the patterns of family life, manifesting in new work patterns, chore allocations, and household tensions. Though men have taken an increased share of childcare and grocery shopping duties, reallocations are not nearly as stark as disruptions to work patterns might suggest, and families having to reallocate duties report greater tensions. Our results highlight tightened constraints budging up against stable and gendered patterns of intra-household cooperation norms. While the long-run consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown on family life cannot be assessed at this stage, we point toward the likely opportunities and challenges.

The use of regulation of sex work is undergoing sweeping changes across Europe and client criminalisation is becoming very widespread, with conflicting claims about the intended and actual consequences of this policy. We discuss changes in demand for paid sex accompanying the criminalization of prostitution in the United Kingdom, which moved from a relatively permissive regime under the Wolfenden Report of 1960, to a much harder line of aiming to crack down on prostitution with the Prostitution (Public Places) Scotland Act 2007 and the Policing and Crime Act of 2009 in England and Wales. We make use of two waves of the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL2, conducted in 2000-2001 and NATSAL3, conducted in 2010-2012) to document the changes in both the amount of demand for paid sex and in the type of clients that have taken place across the two waves, and their possible implications for policies that frame prostitution as a form of crime.

We contribute to the literature on the effects of personality traits on labour market outcomes focusing on time mismanagement as an underlying mechanism. We document differences in time allocation to the labour market by different personality types in the UK and show how they may account for some of the labour market disadvantage experienced by more neurotic types (and the advantage experienced by more conscientious types) focussing in particular on unpaid overtime. We make use of the first ten waves of the Understanding Society Survey and show that particular personality types are more prone to working longer hours and experiencing time pressures. Whilst the effect of most personality traits is consistent with a rational theory of time allocation, we also find that neuroticism is instead associated with inconsistent behaviour (working fewer paid and more unpaid hours) and discuss implications for both labour market discrimination and labour supply theory.

Experts increasingly use social media to communicate with the wider public, prompted by the need to demonstrate impact and public engagement. While previous research on the use of social media by experts focused on single topics and performed sentiment analysis, we propose to extend the scope by investigating experts’ networks, topics and communicative styles. We perform social and semantic network as well language analysis of top tweeting scientists and economists. We find that economists tweet less, mention fewer people and have fewer Twitter conversations with members of the public than scientists. Scientists use a more informal and involved style and engage wider audiences through multimedia contents, while economists use more jargon, and tend to favour traditional written media. The results point to differences in experts’ communicative practices online, and we propose that disciplinary ways of ‘talking’ may pose obstacles to an effective public communication of expert knowledge.

The use of regulation of sex work is undergoing sweeping changes across Europe and client criminalization is becoming very widespread, with conflicting claims about the intended and actual consequences of this policy. We discuss changes in demand for paid sex accompanying the criminalization of prostitution in the United Kingdom, which moved from a relatively permissive regime under the Wolfenden Report of 1960, to a much harder line of aiming to crack down on prostitution with the Prostitution (Public Places) Scotland Act 2007 and the Policing and Crime Act of 2009 in England and Wales. We make use of two waves of the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL2, conducted in 2000–2001 and NATSAL3, conducted in 2010–2012) to document the changes in both the amount of demand for paid sex and in the type of clients that have taken place across the two waves, and their possible implications for policies that frame prostitution as a form of crime.

We investigate the heterogeneity of the effect of having to wait for longer than expected to reach State Pension Age (SPA) on different groups of women and their partners. We find a positive impact on employment and labour force participation, but also large negative impacts on personal, financial, mental wellbeing and life satisfaction. The effects are larger for women with low education and for those without a partner, suggesting that changes in the SPA exacerbate existing inequalities. Our results caution against considering changes in SPA in isolation from personal and family circumstances, given that these affect outcomes significantly.

These abstracts are of research papers presents at the Day Conference held at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Saturday 10th June 2017. Full papers are available at http://www.bsrl...

We use a controlled experiment widely adopted in the literature to assess the extent of gender differences in attitudes towards competition in a sample of UK professionals working in two different companies. We find no gender differences in attitudes towards competition nor in performance under a competitive reward scheme. This results qualifies the findings of a large number of experimental studies that show that women are more likely than men to shy away from competition. We also find that, in our sample of professionals, women's performance under competitive schemes does not decline. We conclude that it is important to avoid generalisations on the presence of gender gaps in attitudes towards competition. This being the first field study with professional workers in relatively competitive sectors, we think more needs to be carried out.

The paper presents the economic literature on gender bias, illustrating the underpinnings in the psychology of bias and stereotyping; the incorporation of these insights into current theoretical and empirical research in economics; and the literature on methods to contrast bias, presenting evidence (where it exists) of their effectiveness. The second part of the paper presents results of an experiment in revealing unconscious bias.

This paper contributes to the literature on public health communication by studying how the framing of a message relaying the forecast impact of COVID-19 prevention measures affects compliance behaviour amongst both the young and old. A representative sample of survey respondents in the UK and US, along with selected respondents in Italy, were presented with forecasts for the number of deaths from COVID-19 in their countries with and without public adherence to various preventive behaviours. We experimentally varied whether this information was presented in terms of likely deaths or lives saved. The lives saved frame increases reported protective behaviours, but only amongst older respondents. We present evidence consistent with the hypothesis that framing is likelier to affect decisions whose consequences are felt by oneself (i.e. protective behaviours by the elderly) rather than solely others (i.e. protective behaviours amongst the young).

The aim of this study was to determine the main characteristics of a “good teacher” through the use of questionnaires designed to assess teaching skills and competences, considering the point of view of teachers, principals, and students. In total, 82 teachers, 14 principals, and 625 middle-school students from 5 public schools in São Paulo state participated in this study. Two questionnaires were applied, one designed for teachers and principals and the other for students. First, teachers and principals completed their specific questionnaire, after which the other questionnaire was applied to the students. Both questionnaires contained multiple choice questions related to eight distinct subsections. The questions were answered through the use of a Likert scale, varying from 1 (“totally disagree”) to 5 (“totally agree”). The comparisons of the frequency of responses among all questionnaire subsections between teachers and principals were analyzed using a Chi-Square and the z-test, with P-values adjusted to the Bonferroni method. The statistical significance level was set as P < 0.05. The subsection “class atmosphere” presented the highest percentage of response “totally agree”, closely followed by “professional engagement”. Significant differences (P < 0.05) in responses were observed between teachers and principals for “teaching planning and practice”, “use of time and material resources to develop classes”, and “professional engagement” domains. In summary, it was demonstrated that some teaching characteristics might be more important than others, with some of these characteristics exhibiting significant differences between groups. Nevertheless, it is crucial to emphasize that all assessed educational domains may be recognized as critical teaching qualities, as all of them presented high levels of “totally agree” responses.

The paper presents the economic literature on gender bias, illustrating the underpinnings in the psychology of bias and stereotyping; the incorporation of these insights into current theoretical and empirical research in economics, and the literature on methods to contrast bias presenting evidence (where it exists) of their effectiveness. The second part of the paper presents results of an experiment in revealing unconscious bias.

Several reforms increased the state pension age (SPA) in the UK and equalised it to age 65 for both men and women. We use panel data and a difference-in-difference approach to comprehensively analyse the direct and indirect effects of these reforms, investigating mechanisms for indirect effects. We also analyse the heterogeneity of the effects of smaller versus larger increases in SPA, by partnership status, as well as spill-over effects to male partners. Consistent with previous research, we find a positive impact of the reform on employment and labour force participation, but also large negative impacts on various aspects of personal, financial, and mental wellbeing. The effect is larger for women who have to wait longer to reach their SPA, and smaller for women with a partner (compared to those without a partner). The effect of the reform partially spills over to affected women partner's labour market participation. Our results can be generalised to other countries that are seeking to implement similar reforms.

These abstracts are of research papers presented at the Day Conference held at the University of Nottingham, Saturday 3rd March 2018. Full papers are available at http://www.bsrlm.org.uk/publicatio...

Building on existing theoretical work on sex markets, this study uses data from the 2001 British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) to replicate the analysis of the demand for paid sex. It formally tests the effects of attitudes, risky behaviors, and personal characteristics of a sample of men on the demand for paid sex. Previous theoretical work argues that stigma plays a fundamental role in determining both demand and risk, and in particular due to the presence of stigma, the demands for unpaid sex and for paid sex are not perfect substitutes. This study finds a positive effect of education (proxy for income), negative effects of professional status (proxies for stigma associated with buying sex), positive and significant effects of all risky behavior variables, and no significant effects of variables that measure the relative degree of conservatism in morals.

We design an experiment to assess the effect of beliefs about gender in selecting oneself or a designated person to carry out a volunteering task. Participants in a volunteering task are given the option of selecting oneself or nominating someone from their group, and the group is described to them in terms of cartoons depicting women and men displaying different emotional states: happy, neutral or unhappy. We introduce a treatment consisting of gender priming, in which we elicit gender views with a set of 12 questions routinely used in social attitudes surveys to determine the degree of sexism of respondents. We find that women offer to volunteer more than men, and that while neither the emotional affect or the gender of the nominated person per se influence designation, men in the unprimed condition are more likely to choose the happy female face. Gender priming reduces designations and increases volunteering for all, but the treatment effect differs across genders: though both women and men are likelier to volunteer when primed, the men nominate fewer women across the spectrum of moods once gender primed, and the effect is stronger for the more sexist men, whilst women are reducing their delegation more uniformly once gender-primed, never nominate the neutral woman, and nominate the happy woman more often the less sexist they are. Our results provide evidence of both stereotyping by men and self-stereotyping by women: men are happy to pick any woman for the volunteering, though they display a preference for the happy woman, whilst women are both more sensitive to the mood displayed and prefer to pick women who might be happy to do it the less sexist they are. When it comes to actually carrying out the volunteering task, we find that, conditional on volunteering, women are more likely to actually follow through than men.

We discuss changes in the demand for paid sex accompanying the criminalization of prostitution in the United Kingdom, which moved from a relatively permissive regime under the Wolfenden Report of 1960, to a much harder line of aiming to crack down on prostitution with the Prostitution (Public Places) Scotland Act 2007 and the Policing and Crime Act of 2009 in England and Wales. We make use of two waves of a representative survey, the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal2, conducted in 2000-2001 and Natsal3, conducted in 2010-2012) to illustrate the changes in demand that have taken place across the two waves. We do not find demand decreasing in our sample and find a shift in the composition of demand towards more risky clients, which we discuss in the context of the current trends towards criminalization of prostitution.

We present a model of the evolution of identity via dynamic interaction between the choice of education and the transmission of values in a community from parents to children, when parents care about the preservation of their traditional community values, different from the values of the host society. We compare the educational and socioeconomic outcomes in different scenarios (melting pot versus multiculturalism). If schooling shifts children's identity away from their parents' values, parents may choose lower levels of education for their children, at the cost of reducing their future earnings. We show how this effect can be attenuated and reversed when the school or, indeed, the host society are willing to accommodate the values of the community and/or to adjust to these values; otherwise the community gradually becomes alienated. This approach may be applied to the analysis of temporal changes in values and attitudes in a community of immigrants, as well as ethnic, religious, or other minority groups.

We study the supply of unpaid eldercare (in particular caring for parents) in the UK, focusing on both the division of care and caring tasks by gender and the effect of conformity to social norms in relation to caring. We then investigate the effect of the amount of care on the well-being of caregivers and whether agreeing with the care norm enhances their well-being. Our results suggest that the eldercare reform neglects important aspects underlying the distribution of care hours and care tasks between caregivers and may potentially worsen intrahousehold inequality in earnings and well-being, in particular, between men and women.

The paper presents a theory of the use of buzz-words in academic discourse. It uses economic principles to analyse the incentives to innovate new buzz words and to use existing buzz-words promoted by other people. It argues that the lack of a credible dominant intellectual elite in business studies, combined with the rapid growth of academic employment in business schools, has stimulated an inefficient proliferation of buzz-words in management studies. It argues that this proliferatilon of buzz-words is in danger of bringing the field of study into disrepute.

We present a model of the evolution of identity via dynamic interaction between the choice of education and the transmission of values in a community from parents to children, when parents care about the preservation of their traditional community values, different from the\ud values of the host society. We compare the educational and socioeconomic outcomes in different scenarios (melting pot versus multiculturalism). If schooling shifts children’s identity away from their parents’\ud values, parents may choose lower levels of education for their children, at the cost of reducing their future earnings. We show how this effect can be attenuated and reversed when the school or, indeed, the host society\ud are willing to accommodate the values of the community and/or to adjust to these values; otherwise the community gradually becomes alienated. This approach may be applied to the analysis of temporal changes in values and attitudes in a community of immigrants, as well\ud as ethnic, religious, or other minority groups.

This paper builds on existing theoretical work on sex markets (Della Giusta, Di Tommaso, and Strøm, 2009a). Using data from the British Sexual Attitudes Survey, we aim to replicate the analysis of the demand for paid sex previously conducted for the US (Della Giusta, Di Tommaso, Shima and Strøm, 2009b). We want to test formally the effect of attitudes, risky behaviors and personal characteristics on the demand for paid sex. Findings from empirical studies of clients suggest that personal characteristics (personal and family background, self-perception, perceptions of women, sexual preferences etc), economic factors (education, income, work) as well as attitudes towards risk (both health hazard and risk of being caught where sex work is illegal), and attitude towards relationships and sex are all likely to affect demand. Previous theoretical work has argued that stigma plays a fundamental role in determining both demand and risk, and that in particular due to the presence of stigma the demand for sex and for paid sex are not, as has been argued elsewhere, perfect substitutes. We use data from the British Sexual Attitudes Survey of 2001 to test these hypotheses. We find a positive effect of education (proxy for income), negative effects of professional status (proxies for stigma associated with buying sex), positive and significant effects of all risky behavior variables and no significant effects of variables which measure the relative degree of conservatism in morals. We conclude with some policy implications.

We build on both our theoretical and empirical work on modelling the demand for paid sex (Della Giusta et al., 2009a, 2009b) and examine the demand for paid sex, considering the effects of risky behaviours and attitudes to relationships and to women on demand. We find that those who declare to have purchased sex have both different socio-demographics (older, with fewer children, more educated but with lower professional status), and different sexual and risky behaviours as well as attitudes to relationships. As expected in the light of findings in the literature (well summarised in a 2004 Urban Studies special issue and in more recent literature) a clear city effect in the sample, mostly driven by London, which goes beyond the attitudes captured in the survey and thus combines a mixture of factors related to the supply of paid sex and unobserved characteristics of city-dwelling respondents.

This contribution examines how feminist economists have conceptualized sex work and trafficking through the lens of agency and stigma. The ongoing debate about legalization has focused on sex worke...

In this chapter, we analyze the demand for paid sex of British men utilizing the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles based on interviews in the period 2010–2012. The paper tests a theoretical model of demand for paid sex (Della Giusta et al. 2009a) where demand for paid sex depends on income, the amount of free sex, stigma, and reputation. A novelty of this chapter consists of analyzing the roles of income and religion. We find that the probability that men pay for sex is 6 percentage points higher for men with an income between £40,000 and £50,000, controlling for education and professional status. The probability of paying for sex increases between 2 and 5 percentage points if the man is religious, after controlling for conservative opinions.

Summary Our paper presents a critical review of the literature on institutional change and the role of institutions in economic development. We discuss the roles and interrelationships of formal and informal institutions and introduce a collection of papers addressing this topic in a variety of development settings.

In the southern Aosta Valley (Italian Western Alps), several massive magnetite bodies occur within serpentinized ultramafic rocks belonging to the Mesozoic meta-ophiolite nappe. The ultramafic rocks consist of lherzolite with minor dunite bodies and show a high pressure metamorphic overprint. The results of a multi-methodological study, based on optical microscopy, electron microprobe analysis and single-crystal X-ray diffraction, are reported here in order to give new insights into (1) the mineralogy and crystal chemistry of spinels and silicates and (2) the genesis of the massive magnetite bodies. Chromium-rich relict cores inside the magnetite grains suggest a derivation from primary chromite concentrations. The major-element behaviour shows the presence of two chromite types: a Cr2O3-rich (Al2O3-poor) type and a Cr2O3-poor (Al2O3-rich) type. Magnetite ore deposits probably represent the product of transformation from a chromite proto-ore which formed in ultramafic rocks pertaining to an ophiolite suite. The transformation of chromite to magnetite occurred during multiple stages: the pre- metamorphic setting of the ultramafics and the petrographic evidence suggest that metasomatism started before the onset of the alpine metamorphism and was active during the early alpine, eclogite- facies metamorphic overprint related to a subduction process under high fluid activity.

Governments have invested heavily in building local and regional entrepreneurial networks in order improve economic performance and regeneration. However, there are many types of network, and different types of network are appropriate for different purposes. Some types of network are most useful in the early stages of entrepreneurial activity and others at later stages. Careful definitions are necessary in order to analyse the role of networks in generating interpersonal and inter-organizational trust, and hence in augmenting the stock of social capital. Effective networks are normally intermediated by reputable trust-brokers. The reputation of government gives it a significant role as a trust-broker, but there is a danger that its reputation may be undermined when it extends its activities into areas where it lacks the competence to intervene effectively.

This paper presents an economic model of prostitution that differs from the existing literature in that it makes no restrictive assumptions regarding the gender, pay, and nature of forgone earning opportunities of prostitutes and clients, and applies the same behavioural hypotheses to both. Our model gives a central role of stigma and reputation effects to both clients and prostitutes. We discuss demand, supply, and equilibrium results, indicating the possible effects of different policies on the industry and its different markets.

Recent studies have analysed the economic benefits of belonging to high-trust networks and the biological foundations of individual trust, but much scepticism remains regarding the precise role of trust in economic transactions, as well as gaps between micro and macro concepts of trust. This paper links individual and institutional trust by modelling the costs associated with accessing market, law and trust-based intermediation systems, and identifies the conditions under which one of the three systems may be more advantageous for rational actors, and thus more likely to emerge. The discussion concentrates on examples drawn from development policy to illustrate how the three systems operate together, and how the failing of the trust system affects the legal and market systems.

The oxidation of a synthetic hercynite with composition Fe2+ 0.699Mg0.301Al1.941Fe3+ 0.059O4 was investigated by X-ray single-crystal diffraction. Heating runs at 500°C up to 212 h did not produce detectable oxidation, but only a small variation in oxygen coordinate u, consistent with very limited reordering of Mg and Al in tetrahedral (T) and octahedral (M) sites, respectively. Oxidation began after the first run at 600°C, producing progressive decreases in u, cell parameter a and the mean atomic number in T site. After 1,842 h at 600°C, the transformation was close to equilibrium, with about 70% of ferrous iron transformed into ferric. This produced about 0.17 vacancies per formula unit, and caused a great increase in the displacement parameters of oxygen and M sites. Vacancies were strongly ordered in M sites, and the oxygen displacement parameter becames anisotropic, unlike stoichiometric spinels—because some of the oxygen coordination polyhedra have a vacancy instead of a cation in one vertex. The behaviour of displacement parameters in this case supports the calculated point defect distribution.

This article presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the glamorization of the courtesan image as proposed by Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge. The film sparked the appearance of high-street fashion inspired by the image of the 19th-century Parisian courtesan, which prompted the authors to examine how and why such images might appeal to female consumers. The critical analysis reaches beyond the images themselves to identify and discuss the modes of circulation of such images, and their function in achieving both the material ends of capitalism (ever-increasing consumption and production) and the promotion of one of the system’s core values (patriarchy). Moreover, the article hopes to illustrate the possibilities offered by integrating cultural and structural analyses of current social phenomena.

A crystal chemical study was carried out on seven Mg-Al rich and Cr-bearing spinels from a calciphyre of the Olkhon metamorphic complex (western Lake Baikal, Russia) in order to: a) verify the structural effects related to the progressive substitution of Cr 3+ , the main substituent cation in this suite pertaining to the MgAl 2 O 4 - MgCr 2 O 4 binary join; b) estimate the closure temperature of the exchange reaction involving Mg and Al in tetrahedral (T) and octahedral (M) sites. This will be a first step towards evaluation of the cooling rate of the host rock. Chemical composition is Mg (Al 2-p , Cr p ) O 4 with 0.03 ≤ p ≤ 0.23 afu. With increasing p, the cell edge a increases from 8.090 to 8.117 A, whereas the oxygen positional parameter u is almost constant. As u is related to the (M-O)/(T-O) ratio, Cr substituting for Al in the M site causes an increase not only of the M-O bond distance, but also that of the tetrahedral T-O. The observed T-O increase is due to Mg ordering into the T site, with increasing Cr content. Cation distributions where used to estimate the closure temperature of the exchange reaction applying two available models. Both estimates are rather consistent for very low Cr content, but substantial disagreement is observed for Cr-rich samples. The inversion trend of the studied spinel suite extrapolated to Cr= 0, enables us to calculate the closure temperature of the MgAl 2 O 4 end-member with the same cooling rate. This suggests that kinetic results from cooling experiments on MgAl 2 O 4 may be applied to cation distributions measured in samples along the MgAl 2 O 4 - MgCr 2 O 4 binary join.

Buzz words are used by professional academics to signal that the author or speaker is aware of current trends in the subject. Buzz worfds are usually introduced in a specific context, but as they become more popular they are used in other contexts where their meaning is less clear. This creates ambiguity, whhich can be deployed to advance spurious arguments that are difficult for opponents to refute. This thesis is illustrated by reference to the use of the 'strategy' concept in intermnational management education