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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 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 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.