Peter D. Lunn

The sports and exercise life-course: a survival analysis of recall data from Ireland.

Recall data from a representative sample of 3080 adults in Ireland in 2003 is used to investigate transitions into and out of regular participation in sports and exercise--an important contributor to overall physical activity. The method produces a continuous picture of participation across the life-course, allowing key transition periods in the life-course to be identified and the determinants of transitions to be analysed with multivariate models. Late adolescence emerges as an important period, when many people drop out from team sports, especially females. Participation in adulthood mostly involves taking up individual sports and exercise activities. The likelihood of making this transition is strongly associated with socio-economic status. Transitions in activity during adulthood do not display significant sex differences, suggesting that the gender gap for involvement in sports and exercise has its roots in childhood. The method also allows age and cohort effects to be distinguished, revealing higher participation among more recent cohorts. The findings must be interpreted carefully, since they are reliant on the accuracy of personal recall. Yet they have implications for how physical activity policy applies over the life-course, suggesting possible returns to targeting lower socio-economic groups in early adulthood, to offering a broader range of activities to young females, and to researching and promoting those activities most likely to be of interest to current young adults as they age.

Measuring discrimination facing ethnic minority job applicants: an Irish experiment:

The role of employer discrimination in labour market matching is often acknowledged but challenging to quantify. What part of the ‘ethnic penalty’ in the labour market is due to recruitment discrimination? This experiment, the first of its kind in Ireland, explicitly measured this by sending out nearly 500 equivalent CVs from Irish and minority candidates in response to advertised vacancies in the greater Dublin area. We find that candidates with Irish names are over twice as likely to be called to interview as are candidates with an African, Asian or German name. This discrimination rate is high by international standards, and does not vary between minority groups. We develop the discussion of the role of prejudice and stereotypes in discrimination in this article, arguing that our findings may be linked to the fact that Ireland is a ‘new immigration’ country, with no established minority groups and a cohesive national identity.

The Role of Decision-Making Biases in Ireland's Banking Crisis

How Irelands banking crisis ultimately comes to be understood will have a long-term impact on Irish policy and politics. This article considers potential causes of the crisis suggested by advancements in behavioural science. It hypothesises and assesses whether known biases in judgement and decision-making were instrumental in the development and severity of the crisis. Evidence is considered in relation to whether financial decisions were influenced by seven empirically established behavioural phenomena. The hypotheses are relevant not only to the decisions of consumers, businesspeople, bankers and regulators, but also to the roles played by civil servants, politicians, academics and journalists. The analysis concludes that the scale of Irelands boom and its lack of relevant past experience increased the vulnerability of decision-makers to specific forms of disadvantageous economic and financial reasoning. Implications for policy designed to prevent and contain future crises are discussed.

Participation in School Sport and Post-School Pathways: Evidence from Ireland

We examine the impact of participation in sport at secondary school on post-school pathways using a survey of Irish school-leavers, distinguishing between those who dropped out of sport during their secondary school years and those who continued playing in their final school years. We find that members of this latter group are, on completion of secondary schooling, significantly and substantially more likely to continue their education rather than to join the labour market. This effect survives controlling for individual background traits, school characteristics, attachment to the school and academic achievement. Our results are also robust to the use of propensity score matching to control for selection into participation in sport based on observable characteristics. We relate our findings to previous work on the potential labour market benefits of participation in sport and to the emerging literature on the role of consumption value in educational choice.

Consumer switching intentions for telecoms services: evidence from Ireland

Despite long-standing market liberalisation and efforts to reduce switching costs, many consumers have never switched telecoms provider. This paper investigates how consumer and service characteristics relate to switching intentions, using a sample of fixed-line broadband, mobile telephony and landline telephony customers from a 2015 survey conducted by ComReg, Irelands National Regulatory Authority. We add to previous work by examining a rich array of personal and service characteristics while controlling for both bill shock and expected gains from switching. We find that long-standing subscribers who have never switched are exceptionally resistant to switching. Bill shock is strongly associated with intention to switch, especially among those more inclined to switch. A similar effect arises for expected gains, especially gains over 20%. These results are consistent with both a preference for fair treatment and with behavioural barriers to switching that require large gains to overcome. The effects of bundling and of the few socioeconomic, supplier or application use characteristics that are statistically significant are smaller and not consistent across markets. This implies that willingness to switch is not simply a characteristic of certain social groups, but is more complex and context dependent.