ACCOUNTING FOR THE GREAT RECESSION IN THE UK: REAL BUSINESS CYCLES AND FINANCIAL FRICTIONS*

This book has examined the relationship between inequality and social citizenship through the everyday accounts of notionally equal citizens in austerity Britain. In doing so, it has sought to establish how citizens perceive and negotiate the material and status hierarchies that condition their lives. In particular, whether and how individuals experiencing relative deprivation and affluence develop distinctive modes of reference, attachment and engagement when it comes to welfare and social citizenship. Since the Great Recession, public service reforms and fiscal recalibration have resulted in an increasingly individualistic and commodified welfare settlement in the UK. These developments have given rise to fault lines in the subjectivity and political agency of social citizens that need to be understood within and as contributing towards systemic processes of inclusion and exclusion. Through a schematic summary of the key themes and lessons that have emerged from this book, this concluding chapter considers what this reveals about the rise of anti-social citizenship and its implications for welfare policy and politics going forward.

Download Full-text

The Aggregate Implications of Regional Business Cycles

Econometrica ◽

10.3982/ecta14243 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 87 (6) ◽

pp. 1789-1833 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Martin Beraja ◽

Erik Hurst ◽

Juan Ospina

Keyword(s):

Business Cycles ◽

Great Recession ◽

Aggregate Demand ◽

Strong Relationship ◽

Aggregate Data ◽

New Keynesian ◽

Aggregate Fluctuations ◽

Wage Dynamics ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Wage Stickiness

Making inferences about aggregate business cycles from regional variation alone is difficult because of economic channels and shocks that differ between regional and aggregate economies. However, we argue that regional business cycles contain valuable information that can help discipline models of aggregate fluctuations. We begin by documenting a strong relationship across U.S. states between local employment and wage growth during the Great Recession. This relationship is much weaker in U.S. aggregates. Then, we present a methodology that combines such regional and aggregate data in order to estimate a medium‐scale New Keynesian DSGE model. We find that aggregate demand shocks were important drivers of aggregate employment during the Great Recession, but the wage stickiness necessary for them to account for the slow employment recovery and the modest fall in aggregate wages is inconsistent with the flexibility of wages we observe across U.S. states. Finally, we show that our methodology yields different conclusions about the causes of aggregate employment and wage dynamics between 2007 and 2014 than either estimating our model with aggregate data alone or performing back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations that directly extrapolate from well‐identified regional elasticities.

Download Full-text

Racial Disparities in Credit Constraints in the Great Recession: Evidence from the UK

The B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy ◽

10.2202/1935-1682.2943 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

John Gathergood

Keyword(s):

Racial Disparities ◽

Great Recession ◽

Credit Constraints ◽

Racial Minority ◽

Racial Groups ◽

Credit Access ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Household Credit ◽

The Difference ◽

The Uk

Abstract This paper investigates racial disparities in household credit constraints using UK survey data. We find a widening disparity in the proportion of racial minority households reporting they face credit constraints compared with non-minority households over the period 2006-2009. By 2009 three times as many racial minority households faced credit constraints compared with non-minority households. The difference in credit constraints across racial minority and non-minority households is not explained by a broad set of covariates. While cross-section variation in reported credit constraints might most likely reflect unobservables, we argue this time series variation is very unlikely to arise due to unobservables and is evidence of growing perceived disparity in credit access between racial groups over the period.

Download Full-text

Crisis experiences and welfare attitudes during the Great Recession: A comparative study on the UK, Germany and Sweden

Acta Sociologica ◽

10.1177/0001699318764261 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 62 (2) ◽

pp. 135-151

Author(s):

Patrick Sachweh

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

Job Loss ◽

Crisis Response ◽

Welfare Regimes ◽

Welfare Provision ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Self Interest ◽

Welfare Attitudes ◽

The Uk ◽

Other Regarding

What motivates welfare attitudes during economic crises? While existing research highlights self-interest, this conclusion rests on a predominant conceptualization of citizens’ crisis experiences as personal job loss. However, during economic downturns, people are likely to also witness colleagues or distant others being laid off, which might affect welfare attitudes for reasons beyond self-interest. This article analyses how personal job loss as well as that of colleagues and acquaintances during the Great Recession is related to welfare attitudes in the UK, Germany and Sweden, where welfare regimes and crisis policies differ systematically. Based on Eurobarometer data from 2010, the findings reveal that the importance of personal job loss as well as that of colleagues and acquaintances varies cross-nationally. In the liberal UK – with its modest crisis response – demand for greater public welfare provision is associated with personal job loss. In social-democratic Sweden – with its active crisis management – demand for greater welfare provision is associated with acquaintances’ job loss. In conservative Germany – with its labour market insider-focused crisis response – no clear picture emerges. These findings support a sociological perspective emphasizing the importance of other-regarding concerns for welfare attitudes and the role of institutions in structuring people’s self-interest and normative orientations.

Download Full-text

Growth, Business Cycles, and the Great Recession: Comparing State and County Unemployment Costs Per Capita for North Carolina

Advances in Business and Management Forecasting ◽

10.1108/s1477-407020190000013009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 67-82

Author(s):

Christopher Keller ◽

James Kleckley

Keyword(s):

North Carolina ◽

Business Cycles ◽

Great Recession ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Per Capita

Download Full-text

Who Suffers During Recessions?

The Journal of Economic Perspectives ◽

10.1257/jep.26.3.27 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 27-48 ◽

Cited By ~ 225

Author(s):

Hilary Hoynes ◽

Douglas L Miller ◽

Jessamyn Schaller

Keyword(s):

Business Cycles ◽

Great Recession ◽

The United States ◽

Market Outcomes ◽

Race And Gender ◽

Demographic Groups ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Low Education ◽

Hispanic Workers ◽

And Gender

In this paper, we examine how business cycles affect labor market outcomes in the United States. We conduct a detailed analysis of how cycles affect outcomes differentially across persons of differing age, education, race, and gender, and we compare the cyclical sensitivity during the Great Recession to that in the early 1980s recession. We present raw tabulations and estimate a state panel data model that leverages variation across U.S. states in the timing and severity of business cycles. We find that the impacts of the Great Recession are not uniform across demographic groups and have been felt most strongly for men, black and Hispanic workers, youth, and low-education workers. These dramatic differences in the cyclicality across demographic groups are remarkably stable across three decades of time and throughout recessionary periods and expansionary periods. For the 2007 recession, these differences are largely explained by differences in exposure to cycles across industry-occupation employment.

Download Full-text