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The authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to working from home. The authors also consider the role of pandemic-policy stringency in affecting well-being in Europe.

The authors have four waves of novel harmonised longitudinal data in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden, covering the period May–November 2020. Well-being is measured in five dimensions: life satisfaction, a worthwhile life, loneliness, depression and anxiety. A retrospective diary indicates whether the individual was working in each month since February 2020 and if so whether at home or not at home. Policy stringency is matched in per country at the daily level. The authors consider both cross-section and panel regressions and the mediating and moderating effects of control variables, including household variables and income.

Well-being among workers is lower for those who work from home, and those who are not working have the lowest well-being of all. The panel results are more mitigated, with switching into working at home yielding a small drop in anxiety. The panel and cross-section difference could reflect adaptation or the selection of certain types of individuals into working at home. Policy stringency is always negatively correlated with well-being. The authors find no mediation effects. The well-being penalty from working at home is larger for the older, the better-educated, those with young children and those with more crowded housing.

The harmonised cross-country panel data on individuals' experiences during COVID-19 are novel. The authors relate working from home and policy stringency to multiple well-being measures. The authors emphasise the effect of working from home on not only the level of well-being but also its distribution.

We consider the link between poverty and subjective well-being, and focus in particular on the role of time. We use panel data on 49,000 individuals living in Germany from 1992 to 2012 to uncover three empirical relationships. First, life satisfaction falls with both the incidence and intensity of contemporaneous poverty. Second, poverty scars: those who have been poor in the past report lower life satisfaction today, even when out of poverty. Last, the order of poverty spells matters: for a given number of years in poverty, satisfaction is lower when the years are linked together. As such, poverty persistence reduces well-being. These effects differ by population subgroups.

This study aims to show how cost savings can be achieved through optimizing the scheduling of e-commerce enablements. The University of California is one of the largest, most prestigious public education and research systems in the world, yet diminished state support is driving the search for system-wide cost savings.

This study documents the preparation for and rollout of an e-procurement system across a subset of campuses. A math programing tool was developed for prioritizing the gradual rollout to generate the greatest expected savings subject to resource constraints.

The authors conclude by summarizing the results of the rollout, discussing lessons learned and their benefit to decision-makers at other public institutions.

The pilot program comprising three campuses has been predicted to yield $1.2m in savings over a one-year period; additional sensitivity analysis with respect to savings, project timelines and other rollout decisions illustrate the robustness of these findings.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Ethnic minority entrepreneurs (EMEs) are traditionally associated with lower growth industry sectors. The purpose of this paper is to draw on the theory of mixed embeddedness to determine if more recent EMEs have been able to break out of lower growth sectors and if break out varies across ethnic minority groups. It also compares entrepreneurial quality in terms of weekly hours worked, weekly earnings and job satisfaction.

Quantitative inferential statistical analysis is undertaken on data drawn from the large scale, social sciences data set for the UK, Understanding Society.

The study finds that break out is not associated with being a recent EME but does vary across ethnic minority groups. Break out is found to be associated with gender, education, English language proficiency and occupational status. Some variation in entrepreneurial quality is found for both recent EMEs and across ethnic minority groups.

Understanding the nature and quality of ethnic minority entrepreneurship is important since it informs public debate about migration, informs policy and shapes activities of future EMEs.

The study provides a theoretically grounded interpretation of the explanatory variables associated with EME break out and entrepreneurial quality. Second, it provides a large confirmatory study of break out and finally, it also finds an important empirical nuance to the concept of opportunity structure by identifying a variation over time in both external and socio-demographic factors.

This paper aims to address the knowledge gap, by exploring the attitudes and experiences of mediators relative to the process, based on research with practitioners in Scotland. Recent research on construction mediation in Scotland has focused exclusively on construction lawyers’ and contractors’ interaction with the process, without reference to the views of mediators themselves.

The entire research design of this research was constrained by the small population of practising Scottish construction mediators (thought to be circa. 20 in 2013). The design encompassed a literature search, participant interviews, questionnaire survey and qualitative and quantitative data. The research questionnaire was designed to capture data related to the biography, training and experience of those interviewed before their opinion on the benefits of, and problems with, mediation were sought.

The results indicate that mediations failed because of ignorance, intransigence and over-confidence of the parties. Barriers to greater use of mediation in construction disputes were identified as the lack of skilled, experienced mediators, the continued popularity of adjudication and both lawyer and party resistance. Notwithstanding the English experience, Scottish mediators gave little support for mandating disputants to mediate before proceeding with court action. A surprising number were willing to give an evaluation of the dispute rather than merely facilitating a settlement.

There are few experienced construction mediators in Scotland, and the continued popularity of statutory adjudication is a significant barrier. Mediators believe that clients’ negative perceptions of mediation are a bigger barrier than lawyers’ perceptions. The mediators wanted judicial encouragement for mediation backed by some legislative support, mediation clauses incorporated into construction contracts and government adoption of mediation as the default process in its own contracts.

In December 1991, General Motors Corp. announced that it would lay off 74,000 employees. The same month, The New York Times reported that Xerox Corp., Eastman Kodak Co., IBM Corp., and General Motors, among other organizations, expect many 1991 layoffs to be permanent. Some feel that's because this latest US recession is not a cyclical downturn but an overdue adjustment indicative of a relocation of the world economy.