Fiona Carmichael

The opportunity costs of informal care: does gender matter?

In this paper, we investigate the costs borne by both male and female carers in terms of their forgone formal employment opportunities. Traditionally, informal care was supplied by women but nowadays women are not only more likely to work, but also likely to be significant contributors to family finances. For women, this implies that the size of any forgone earnings cost of informal care is increasing. At the same time, population ageing is making for increasing numbers requiring care. From a policy perspective it is therefore helpful to consider a less traditional but nevertheless important source of informal care, men. We find that both male and female carers bear indirect costs in that they are less likely to be in paid work than otherwise similar non-carers and when they are in paid work they earn significantly less. However, we find that the motivation for lower employment participation is not the same for men as it is for women.

Team performance: the case of English Premiership football

Sporting production function studies have been almost entirely US based concentrating largely, although not exclusively, on baseball. Mainly due to a dearth of match play statistics, there have been few studies of other sports, with that of association football being a significant omission given the sports international appeal and global coverage. This study attempts to redress the balance by utilizing a new data source, containing information on a range of specific play variables, to estimate a production function for English Premiership football. Our results emphasize the key attacking and defensive skills, and provide support for the notion that teams may intentionally employ dubious or illegal tactics to succeed. The inclusion of team effects provides evidence consistent with the view of the emergence of an elite group of clubs dominating the league. Copyright

Why do governments invest in elite sport? A polemic

Elite sport currently enjoys high levels of investment in many advanced capitalist countries. The primary aim of this piece is to introduce and unpack the reasons generally given by states for prioritizing and investing in elite sport. While our core focus is the UK sport policy sector, many of the discussions will be relevant for other, advanced liberal capitalist systems (e.g. Australia and Canada) and even the now defunct dictatorships (e.g. the Soviet Union and the GDR). We show how commonsensical propositions (e.g. ‘elite sport success promotes participation among citizens’) are not always based on wide, existing research and evidence. The philosophy behind the United Kingdoms model of sport – and that of several other advanced states – we term a ‘virtuous cycle’ of sport, whereby elite sport success is seen to lead to both international prestige for the nation, a ‘feel-good factor’ among the population and, importantly, to an increase in participation among the masses. This, in turn, leads to a healthier nation and to a wider pool of people from which to pick the champions of the future. This article takes a closer look at the assumptions underlying such a model of sport.

Home field effect and team performance: Evidence from English Premiership football

This article discusses the home-field effect in professional team sports and provides further evidence of home advantage in association football as played in the English Premier League. Utilizing play data it employs match-based production function to investigate the home-field effect on within-match performance by home and away teams.

Male unemployment and crime in England and Wales

This paper employs county level data to investigate the relationship between crime and male adult and youth unemployment in Britain. Our results indicate that there is a systematic positive relationship between most crime and male unemployment regardless of age.

Production and Efficiency in Association Football

Despite their proliferation, sporting production function studies remain almost entirely U.S.-based, concentrating largely (although not exclusively) on baseball. Mainly due to a dearth of match-play statistics, there have been few studies of other, more interactive sports. This study attempts to partly fill the gap by using a new data source containing information on specific match-play variables to estimate a season-based production function for English Premiership association football teams. On the basis of computed residuals, the authors also identify those teams shown to be relatively efficient and inefficient in various aspects of match plays.

Who will care? Employment participation and willingness to supply informal care

The impact of informal care responsibilities on the willingness and ability of caregivers to undertake paid employment has been the subject of a number of studies. In contrast, the effect of employment status on willingness to undertake informal care has been less well explored. This paper concentrates on this less-studied direction of causality using the data provided by 15 waves of the British Household Panel Survey. We find that employment participation and earnings both impact negatively on willingness to supply informal care. This evidence has implications for health and social care policy since informal care has been shown to be a significant substitute for formal long-term care.

Ethnic Penalties in Unemployment and Occupational Attainment: Evidence for Britain

In spite of progress made since the 1950s and 1960s, black, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers remain disadvantaged relative to whites in terms of their labour market opportunities. In general, they experience higher rates of unemployment and tend to be under-represented in higher paid, non-manual occupations. They can therefore be said to pay an ethnic penalty in the competition for jobs although the penalties paid vary considerably between the minority groups. In this paper we examine the different employment experiences of black, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi men and women in terms of their unemployment propensities and occupational attainment.We use maximum likelihood methods to show that the ethnic penalties experienced by minority workers are not fully explained by differences in human capital endowments and personal characteristics. We conclude that at least some of the disadvantage experienced by ethnic minorities in the British labour market can be attributed to discriminatory selection practices by employers.

Elasticity of demand for Rugby League attendance and the impact of BskyB

This note adds to the literature on price elasticity of demand for attendance at sports league fixtures using a cross-section study of English Rugby League for 1994/95. A price elasticity of demand of -0.57 we found. Impacts on attendance of live televising of matches by BSkyB are identified and uncertainty of outcome effects is shown.

Giving older workers a voice: constraints on the employment of older people in the North West of England

This article contributes to the literature on older workers and employment, providing a regional perspective on the relationship between age and work. The study is based on interviews in conjunction with occupational-event calendars with 56 individuals in North West England. The primary aim was to gain in-depth understanding of perceived constraints that older people feel hinder their employment prospects within the context of their daily lives. Significant constraints on employment and re-employment were identified and attributed to health, negative perceptions of self, lack of formal human capital and undervaluation of experience, financial disincentives for employers to employ older workers and prevailing ageist attitudes.