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The commercialization of labour markets: evidence from wage inequality in the Middle Ages
Get PDFThis paper moves beyond the focus on ‘average’ wage trends in pre‐industrial economies by examining the broad diversity of pay rates and forms of remuneration across occupations and regions in medieval England. We find that whilst some workers enjoyed substantial growth in wage rates after the Black Death, there was a large group who experienced no real increases. We argue that wage inequality in post‐Black Death England reflects the uneven penetration of market forces across occupations and regions, with deep‐rooted customary structures continuing to shape remuneration. Its findings suggest that a more nuanced approach is essential for understanding the complexities and continuities of pre‐industrial labour dynamics
Gross negligence in bank payments law
Get PDFThe law’s allocation of responsibility for disputed bank payments is important not only for banks and customers, but also, given the volume and value of payments, for the economy more broadly. This article examines loss allocation under common law, EU–UK regulation and the UK’s ‘world-first’ scheme for ‘authorised push payment’ frauds, showing that the gross negligence standard of customer conduct is a common feature. Indeed, this ‘slippery concept’ sits at critical junctures, providing, in practice, the most relevant limitation to a bank’s liability to refund payments. The article analyses what this standard means in English common law and in its regulatory contexts, and highlights the important connection between the two. It then draws upon decisions by the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service, amongst other sources, to explore how evaluating bank customer conduct works in practice, concluding that it is time for regulators to rethink the status quo
Methods for studying union effects: a review and comparative analysis of empirical Industrial Relations literature
Get PDFThis paper reviews methodological developments in Industrial Relations (IR) research on union effects from 1990 to 2023, based on 511 studies in six leading IR journals in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. We find that institutional contexts shape methodological choices over time and note a general shift from descriptive analyses to advanced quantitative approaches, such as fixed effects, instrumental variables, and quasi‐experimental designs. At the same time, however, qualitative and mixed methods remain central to the field. The paper further shows that research agendas have expanded from focusing on wages, collective bargaining, and workplace HR policies to include political and societal outcomes. Finally, we situate IR studies of union effects relative to adjacent disciplines: economics, sociology, political science, psychology, and management. Bibliometric analysis reveals close ties between IR and economics, as well as shared research interests with sociology and political science. The findings suggest IR has increased its methodological sophistication and maintained a pluralist identity – with both features informed by changing research priorities, national institutions, and ongoing dialogue with adjacent disciplines
Involved fatherhood in Slovakia? A multi-dimensional picture painted using multiple methods
Get PDFWhile multiple Western European countries have introduced leave policies that set aside well-paid leave for fathers – policy expected to support more involved fatherhood – post-socialist Central and Eastern European countries were slower to follow. The 2010 Slovak fathers’ leave policy reform was an early regional exception in granting fathers 28 weeks of high leave benefits not transferable to mothers. The reform provides a unique opportunity to explore the extent to which such policy may foster involved fatherhood in a post-socialist context characterized by practices, individual attitudes and societal norms geared towards fathers’ economic provision rather than hands-on childcare. I draw on a three-dimensional conceptualization of paternal involvement, entailing engagement, accessibility and responsibility; and a combination of methods – qualitative (38 interviews with fathers and mothers) and quantitative (unique administrative microdata). My qualitative analysis shows that fathers’ leave-taking can stimulate greater engagement and accessibility but brings about less change in fathers’ responsibility for children. My quantitative analysis reveals further limits to the policy’s potential for fostering fathers’ involvement: a considerable proportion of fathers were excluded from using the policy and among those eligible, fathers with lower-class markers were less likely to use it
Platforming blackness as an object of poverty
Get PDFNon-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in Global Minority Countries have, for decades, exerted considerable influence over the visual and discursive representations of Black, Brown and Indigenous populations in Global Majority Countries. Often perpetuating reductive narratives conflating poverty with racialized bodies, these representations have crafted a racial hierarchy reminiscent of the colonial era. In response, a growing number of African NGOs are challenging this single conflation of poverty and Blackness through mediated performances on TikTok to reframe these narratives. However, this article argues that such efforts are marked by a paradox. While seeking to disrupt these reductive narratives, many NGOs are inadvertently reproducing racialized humanitarian discourses to attract visibility and financial support. Through a racial discourse analysis of the comment sections, this study interrogates how racialized discourses are reconstituted through audience engagement. Drawing on literature, centred on Fanon’s [1967. Black skin, white masks (C. L. Markmann, Trans.). Grove Press] concept of ‘crushing objecthood’, this article explores how the white gaze persists, even among Black African actors, which maintains Blackness as an object of poverty
Inherited inequality and the distribution of opportunities in the United States, China, India, and South Africa
No full textResearchers have sought to quantify the extent of inequality that is inherited from previous generations in multiple ways, including a large body of work on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity. Many of the most frequently used approaches to measuring mobility or inequality of opportunity fit within a general framework which involves, as a first step, an estimation of the extent to which inherited personal characteristics can predict current incomes. We suggest a new method, within that broad framework, which is sensitive to differences across the entire conditional distributions of relevant population subgroups, rather than just in their means – a feature that makes it particularly well-suited to measuring ex-post inequality of opportunity. Sensitivity to differences in higher moments of the conditional distributions allow for a more comprehensive assessment of inherited inequality. We apply this approach to household income distributions in China, India, South Africa, and the United States, to illustrate how the method performs in different settings. We find that inherited inequality accounts for large shares of total inequality, from 36% in the United States to 59% in China, 62% in India, and 81% in South Africa
Creative critical interventions for social justice
No full textCreative Critical Interventions for Social Justice is an edited volume grounded in a commitment to politically engaged research that moves beyond traditional scholarly forms. It examines knowledge that is often excluded from conventional academic production and explores the potential for creative critical writing and cultural production to advance social justice-focused research and practice. The book addresses hierarchies of knowledge creation and knowledge creators, bringing together artists, educators, community organisers, activists, researchers and writers working from decolonial, antiracist, queer and transfeminist perspectives. The volume considers the role of storytelling and experimental, creative and often collaborative interventions across, between and beyond disciplines. Contributions include reflections on the uses of poetry in youth and climate justice work, conversational life stories as a research method in sociological studies of kinship formation, analysis of the potentials and pitfalls of centring researcher positionality and lived experience as a basis for scholarly analysis, relationality and the ethics of ethnographic work with radical political movements, speculative imaginings of the future of political organising and notions of rigour and care for the living and the dead in racialised archives
European children's use and understanding of generative AI: EU Kids Online 2026
No full textOver the past three decades, the internet and digital technologies have become deeply integrated in the everyday lives of children and young people across Europe. The EU Kids Online network (EUKO) has systematically studied these changes since 2006. This multidisciplinary research network was established to provide policymakers, educators, parents and other stakeholders with a robust evidence base on how children use digital technologies, the opportunities they encounter, and the risks they face. Through successive international surveys, most notably the 2010 and 2018 EUKO international comparative studies, EUKO has documented how emerging technologies, from personal computers to smartphones, from chatgroups to social networks, have become embedded in children’s everyday lives. In recent years, children’s online environments have been reshaped by the rapid integration of AI-based tools into search engines, social media platforms, messaging services, creative applications, and educational technologies. These developments introduce new possibilities for learning, creativity and support, while also raising new concerns related to misinformation, synthetic content, privacy, automation, and manipulation. At the same time, regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR and the EU Artificial Intelligence Act seek to respond to these changes, underlining the need for timely, evidence-based knowledge about how children use and experience GenAI in their daily lives. Responding to the growing need to understand if and how children use GenAI across Europe, and its potential implications for risks and opportunities, this EUKO report is a thematic publication based on data from the EUKO 2025 survey. It is the first international report released from the new dataset and is published in connection with Safer Internet Day 2026 under its theme: 'Smart tech, safe choices – Exploring the safe and responsible use of AI'. The main aim of this report is to map children’s access to, use of and experiences with GenAI across Europe, and to examine if and how GenAI is becoming part of their everyday digital lives. The report draws on comparative data from 20 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. This includes data from the EU Kids Online survey with 25,592 children aged 9 to 16 in 17 countries and additional qualitative interviews with 244 children aged 13 to 17 years in 15 countries. The report identifies emerging patterns, differences between groups and countries, and key areas of opportunity and concern. In doing so, it provides an early and policy-relevant insight into how GenAI is reshaping childhood in Europe
Rise of unpaid family workers evidence on distress-driven employment growth in India
No full textWhile the surge in India’s labour force participation rate and worker population ratio since 2017–18 has reversed the earlier decline in female labour force participation, it raises the crucial question of whether this trend is driven by robust economic growth or underlying economic hardship. This paper addresses this debate by focusing on the rapid increase in the most vulnerable employment categories: unpaid family helpers and own-account workers. Our findings indicate that helpers exhibit significantly lower productivity compared to any category of paid workers, with matched estimates showing their attributable daily earnings around ₹50. The real average daily earnings for OAWs, the largest employment group, dropped by around 8% between 2017–18 and 2023–24. The evidence strongly supports the interpretation that the recent expansion in employment reflects economic distress leading to subsistence work
Dynamics of the long-term housing yield: evidence from natural experiments
No full textEach month, a fraction of UK property leases are extended by 90 years or more. We construct a new dataset using thousands of these natural experiments since 2000 and estimate the expected long-term housing yield, y*. After remaining steady at around 5 percent, y* starts to decline when the Great Recession hits and reaches a low of 2.7 percent in 2024. The decline is steeper in inelastic markets, while y* remains higher in regions more exposed to long-run climate risk. Our estimate of y* is updated in real time using public data