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While universities are expected to exemplify sustainable practices, they often encounter high energy demands. This dichotomy highlights the necessity for research into their energy consumption. Through a Systematic Literature Review, we examined international research trends in this field and explored factors influencing energy consumption. The importance of this article stems from its novel approach to energy consumption in universities, addressed from a global and comprehensive perspective, offering generalizable insights. Additionally, it pioneers in the use of a market concentration indicator (Herfindahl–Hirschman index) to measure the level of diversity in various bibliometric aspects. The extended perspective of our approach helps to close knowledge gaps about scientific trends and common energy consumption factors. Our results show that this topic has been investigated with limited involvement of social sciences. Building function, research intensity, and disciplinary orientation are distinctive factors in energy consumption in this field. Most influential authors, countries, and journals in this area were identified. This analysis contributes academically, by mapping research trends and providing guidance for future studies; practically, by offering insights for educational administrators on common factors affecting energy consumption; and in terms of policy, by advocating for the promotion of social sciences-based investigations on the topic.

This paper conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of peer-review documents focused on residential energy consumption. The main finding of this SLR derived from its computational implementation, filling a gap in the available literature. The paper had two main objectives: (i) the SLR itself; and (ii) to systematically identify the main policy measures oriented at reducing energy consumption recommended by the available literature and its related greenhouses gas emissions. A significant lack of a connection between scientific fields was identified. The fields of energy, engineering and environmental science are those that have addressed these topics the most. The sub-field with the largest presence is energy, with 29.5%, followed by engineering (23.9%) and the environment (21.3%). It is recommended that this gap be bridged because many of the main political measures in force to reduce residential energy consumption come from economics and need to be explored from a social science perspective to choose those measures that are more cost-effective.

The Labour Market Insertion Contract was an Active Labour Market Policy introduced in Spain. It was aimed at individuals who had difficulties entering the labour market, and it was introduced with the purpose of reducing the rate of unemployment. This article provides an estimation of the average impact that this contract had on the employability of individuals in the short and long term. A microeconomic analysis was carried out based on causal statistical inference by using propensity score matching and kernel and radial estimators. Data was taken from the most comprehensive database available, which is the Continuous Sample of Work Histories. Results are consistent with literature reports and show that the employability of participants was inferior to that of individuals with similar, temporary-type contracts. This research contributes to the literature by evaluating whether there was empirical evidence to support the political decision to revoke or replace this kind of direct employment programme.