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AbstractThis paper analyses the causal effects of different levels of mother's and father's education on child general and mental health, by applying a fixed effects instrumental variable panel data estimator with selection to nationally represented longitudinal data of over 13,000 observations in the United Kingdom from 2008 to 2019. The results reveal a negative association between mother's education and boys' mental health, potentially driven by relative rather than absolute levels of education between parents. Differences in educational attainment between parents signal unequal power and different values, which inhibits conflict resolution and commitment, leading to higher likelihood of breaking up, which in turn may negatively affect child mental health. On the contrary, no evidence is found of causal links between different levels of mother's and father's education on child health, indicating the relevance of potential environmental factors in the intergenerational transmission mechanism. This calls for more co‐ordination of educational interventions with other economic policies, also taking economic cycle into account.

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal International Business Review and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ibusrev.2016.12.002 ; This paper examines the variation in foreign direct investment (FDI) location decisions of European multinational enterprises (MNEs.) An innovative empirical approach is applied to a new data set which contains over 15,000 individual FDI location decisions in 25 European countries over a 17-year period and combines country, industry and firm level factors. The empirical results show that the responsiveness of FDI location choices to country-level factors is heterogeneous both across sectors and across firms of different characteristics as well as unobserved factors. In particular the results show that the importance of the market size, good infrastructure and Western business and legal environment increases with investing firm's size, while proximity, as well as cultural and linguistic ties are more important for smaller firms.

Theory recognizes the need to account for the allocation of time across activities as a potential constraint on volunteering. Drawing on the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), for the first time, this article examines the decision to volunteer by males and females accounting for their engagement in other leisure activities that also involve discretionary time. Instrumental variable panel-data estimates reveal that it is only for females that volunteering is influenced by the choice of other leisure activities. This implies that males have more autonomy over their volunteering decision relative to their other leisure behavior compared with females. For males, this greater autonomy suggests that volunteering is more closely linked to the concept of "serious leisure" and a form of work as it is more distinct from other leisure activities. These differences have implications for volunteer recruitment.

ABSTRACTThe choice of the location of foreign direct investment is a complex phenomenon, depending not only on host‐country characteristics, but also on host‐industry and specific source‐firm characteristics. To capture these different influences for foreign investment location decisions into 13 Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) over a twelve‐year period, this paper uses a Generalized Nested Logit (GNL) model with firm, industry, and country data. The novel empirical results show that the responsiveness of firms' decisions regarding where to locate capital in CEECs to country‐level variables differs both across sectors and across firms of different sizes and profitability.

Closed access. ; Based on the Eurobarometer data from 2009 (N = 26,788), this paper investigates the correlates of sports participation. In addition to examining standard socio-demographic, economic and lifestyle factors, the paper also focuses on the impact of motivational factors, the availability of sports infrastructure and government support, for the first time collectively at the European level. A further contribution of the paper is that it simultaneously investigates both the decision to participate in sport and the frequency of sports participation in this context. This is made possible through the application of a Zero-Inflated Ordered Probit estimator. This estimator also takes into account two types of non-participants: those who have never participated in sport and those who did not participate at the time of the survey. The results show that the decision to participate in sports and the frequency of sports participation of males and females are affected by different factors, therefore distinct government policies should be applied to attract new, and retain the existing, participants. For example, women are affected more by a need to improve self-esteem, while the men to produce social integration. The provision of sports facilities is of more importance for males, which may indicate a male-oriented nature of the sports facilities, for example, the gym. However, the number of adults and the number of children in the household reduce the probability of sports participation by females. Therefore, higher provision of childcare may be important if female participation is to be increased.

AbstractRecent research documents that exposure to air pollution can trigger various behavioral reactions. This article presents novel empirical evidence on the causal effect of pollution risk on life insurance decisions. We create a unique dataset by linking microgeographic air quality information to the confidential UK Wealth and Assets Survey. We identify an inverse N‐shape relationship between pollution risk and life insurance adoption by exploiting the orthogonal variations in meteorological conditions. Over a given range above a threshold of exposure, rising pollution is associated with rising demand for life insurance, whereas at lower than the threshold levels of pollution, higher exposure risk reduces demand for insurance. Our findings indicate—for the first time—a nonlinear relationship between local pollution risk and life insurance demand.