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AbstractThis meta‐analysis examines the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and earnings. The results reveal that openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion exhibit positive correlations with earnings, whereas agreeableness and neuroticism are inversely correlated with earnings. Overall, personality has a modest‐to‐small effect on earnings, with variations in results depending on econometric models used. Accounting for publication bias, socioeconomic background, and cognitive ability in models affects effect sizes. The findings also underscore the potential for omitted variable bias in the reported personality effects on earnings when relevant factors are omitted from the earnings equation.

The paper tests the hypothesis that developing member states of the European Union converge to richer countries. On the basis of a Cobb-Douglas production function this study estimates beta convergence, and sigma convergence, utilising data from the 28 EU member countries. The results confirm the hypothesis and indicate that poor countries grow faster than rich economies in terms of per capita income and the convergence process for Malta is slower. This finding has important implications for transition EU member states, including that Malta needs to overcome several constraints in the transitional phase to increase the steady state level. ; peer-reviewed

This study analyses changes in income inequality in Malta and its driving factors between 2005 and 2018. The study employs and analyses data collected by Malta's National Statistics Office, which conforms with the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions. Education and labour status are identified as key drivers behind income inequality changes over the period under review. While the Gini coefficient remained relatively stable between 2005 and 2018, the Lorenz curve moved further away from the line of equality at the upper end of the income distribution, showing modest increases. Over the 2014-2018 period, Government intervention has been mildly neutralizing through social transfers but not through taxes. Social transfers provided a greater safety net to citizens than they did during the 2005-2009 period, whereas tax reforms have abraded some tax progressivity. We also find that inequality was mostly attributed to differences in the individual's qualifications, hours worked, occupations, and household employment structure and size, highlighting an important role for policy to further reduce the barriers to economic inclusion. ; peer-reviewed

This article places the European Union (EU) small states within the Vulnerability and Resilience Framework, and tests the correlation between economic resilience and competitiveness. In this analysis, economic resilience is associated with good economic, social and political governance, and economic vulnerability is associated with exposure to external shocks, mostly due to a high degree of trade openness. The findings indicate that (a) that the EU small states tend to exhibit a high degree of economic vulnerability, suggesting that they are highly exposed to external shocks and (b) that the most economically vulnerable EU small states tend to register relatively high resilience and competitiveness scores. This would seem to suggest that economic resilience and competitiveness are related and that their policy framework enables them to withstand or reduce the harmful effects of their exposure to economic shocks. ; peer-reviewed

The paper tests and confirms the hypothesis that trade openness tends to generate GDP growth volatility, and that such growth volatility is mitigated by good economic and political governance. This may explain why some economies do not exhibit a high degree of GDP growth volatility even though they are highly-open. The main implication of these results is that countries that are highly dependent on international trade, including most small states, would be exposed to GDP growth volatility, which has various downsides, as explained in the literature review. However, it does not necessary follow that highly trade-open economies -small states in particular - are the ones that experience the highest degree of GDP growth volatility, if these countries adopt appropriate policies to attenuate the effect of openness on volatility. ; peer-reviewed

This article tests the hypothesis that member states of the EU have been experiencing a declining share of labour income due to technological advance. It discusses factors that lead to the fall in the labour share, including technological advance, which is a tendency found in the capitalist system. We also identify the undesirable effects of a fall in the labour shares. The results of an econometric test conducted in our study, based on a labour demand equation that was derived from the CES production function, confirm the hypothesis that technological progress negatively affected the labour share of income, everything else remaining constant. This finding has important implications for EU Member States, namely that some form of policy intervention would seem to be necessary, as technological progress could lead to a continuing fall in the share of labour income if left to its own devices.

The objective of this presentation is to test whether trade openness leads to economic volatility, keeping other relevant things constant. This theme has been investigated in various studies, as we shall show in the literature review. However this particular study place the analysis within the vulnerability/ resilience framework, proposed by Briguglio et al. (2009). One would expect that if a country depends highly on economic conditions in other countries, its economic situation will also be highly exposed to external shocks, possibly leading to GDP growth volatility in the country in question. Likewise, a high dependence on imports is likely to lead to a high degree of exposure to economic conditions in the rest of the world. There are other reasons why trade openness leads to GDP growth volatility - these will be discussed in the section on the literature on this matter. The hypothesis to be tested in this paper is that GDP growth volatility depends on trade openness, on economic governance and on political governance of a given economy, the latter variable possibly proxying GDP per capita (the stage of development) and social governance in the country concerned. The approach used to test this relationship is the regression method, using panel data. ; peer-reviewed

The paper tests the hypothesis that member states of the European Union have been experiencing declining share of labour income due to technological advance. In the literature, this decline is associated with inequality in the distribution of income, reduction in aggregate demand, and threats to social cohesion. In this paper, the results of an econometric test based on a labour demand equation derived from the CES production function, confirms the hypothesis that technological progress negatively affected the labour share of income in the EU, everything else remaining constant. This finding has important implications for EU Member States, including that some form of policy intervention would seem to be necessary, as left to its own devices, the capitalist system, which has brought about technological progress, could lead to a continuing fall in the share of labour income. ; peer-reviewed

This article tests the hypothesis that member states of the EU have been experiencing a declining share of labour income due to technological advance. It discusses factors that lead to the fall in the labour share, including technological advance, which is a tendency found in the capitalist system. We also identify the undesirable effects of a fall in the labour shares. The results of an econometric test conducted in our study, based on a labour demand equation that was derived from the CES production function, confirm the hypothesis that technological progress negatively affected the labour share of income, everything else remaining constant. This finding has important implications for EU Member States, namely that some form of policy intervention would seem to be necessary, as technological progress could lead to a continuing fall in the share of labour income if left to its own devices. ; peer-reviewed

We set out to examine the relationship between cultural engagement and wellbeing in a European Union state, Malta. We specify a conceptual model of wellbeing, captured by self-assessed life satisfaction as the predicted variable. Armed with a rich dataset (n = 1,125), drawn from a nationally representative sample, we construct variables that capture the diverse forms of cultural participation including a variable that identifies artists. We test three hypotheses, namely that passive cultural participation (audience) is positively associated with life satisfaction, that active (productive) cultural participation is positively associated with life satisfaction, and that artists have a higher level of life satisfaction, all else being equal. We find that both active and passive participation activities are associated with higher levels of life satisfaction; that active participation (including production, donation and travel) manifests a stronger relationship with life satisfaction than passive participation; and that life satisfaction is higher among those who identify as artists even after the effects of all other control variables are parsed out. This being the first nationally representative study on life satisfaction in Malta, the study makes a useful contribution in this regard, finding that factors like employment, health, engagement in sport, politics, religion, environment, as well as region of residence and migration are all significant correlates of life satisfaction.

We set out to examine the relationship between cultural engagement and wellbeing in a European Union state, Malta. We specify a conceptual model of wellbeing, captured by self-assessed life satisfaction as the predicted variable. Armed with a rich dataset (n = 1,125), drawn from a nationally representative sample, we construct variables that capture the diverse forms of cultural participation including a variable that identifies artists. We test three hypotheses, namely that passive cultural participation (audience) is positively associated with life satisfaction, that active (productive) cultural participation is positively associated with life satisfaction, and that artists have a higher level of life satisfaction, all else being equal. We find that both active and passive participation activities are associated with higher levels of life satisfaction; that active participation (including production, donation and travel) manifests a stronger relationship with life satisfaction than passive participation; and that life satisfaction is higher among those who identify as artists even after the effects of all other control variables are parsed out. This being the first nationally representative study on life satisfaction in Malta, the study makes a useful contribution in this regard, finding that factors like employment, health, engagement in sport, politics, religion, environment, as well as region of residence and migration are all significant correlates of life satisfaction. ; peer-reviewed

The paper assesses the state of governance in the Philippines by comparing it with other countries utilising nine indicators relating to political, economic and social governance. The main finding is that the Philippines receives high scores for economic governance and relatively low scores for political and social governance. The study also correlates these indices with GDP per capita and economic growth, so as to comment on the presumption that good political, economic and social governance is associated with these two variables. All the nine governance scores are positively associated with GDP per capita, but not with economic growth. The paper summarises the main findings derived from the indicators, on the basis of which it proposes a number of implications relating to the Philippine economy. ; peer-reviewed