Thèses sur le sujet « Insurance, Unemployment – Great Britain »

This qualitative inquiry built on a relational and dynamic epistemology, distinguishes between four psychologies of unemployment, agency-deprivation, social perception, self-perception and finally dialectical. Within a dialectical psychology of unemployment a dialogical analysis is developed which takes the locus of intervention in unemployment as the interaction between unemployed people, those that work with them and the social knowledge that surrounds the phenomenon. The inquiry uses a longitudinal participatory action approach with two training and guidance centres in Central Scotland, 'Strategic Delivery' and the 'Young Person's Centre' between 1999 and 2001. This involved participant observation on the New Deal and Skillseekers; training programmes, meetings and interviews with managers, unemployed clients and front-line staff. 14 young people were followed through their pre-vocational training between January 2ooo and April 2ooo and follow up interviews were carried out in February and March 2ool. The study also involved social consultancy on measuring soft skills at SD and developing a person-centred approach at the YPC, where the YPC became understood as a multi-voiced organization[Bakhtin (1986)]. The inquiry produced actions, recommendations to the organizations and interpretative findings around the use of a dialogical analysis. Three co-created 'actions' on self-assessment measures for unemployed people are described. The study recommends that two key foundational concepts in the area of unemployment 'social inclusion' and 'employability' need to be reconsidered for this cohort of young people where 42.9% remain unemployed at the end of the research. Finally in making sense of organizational change the study explores the extent to which managers within the YPC were in a dialogue with the socio-political discourse and the movement in meaning of the term 'person-centred'. The study points to the importance of organizations developing an authentic dialogue with their client group. It assesses the role that psychology is playing in the current dominance of a self-perception psychology of unemployment.

This thesis presents an account of the roles played by social actors in the implementation of unemployment policy in the UK. Lipsky’s (1980) theory of street-level bureaucracy has been adopted, updated to the contemporary context of the managerial state (Clarke & Newman, 1997) and developed in the specific case of the Jobcentre. The analysis is based on data collected during an ethnographic investigation of one case study Jobcentre office in Central Scotland. The methods consisted of six months of direct observation, interviews with 48 members of Jobcentre staff, semi-structured interviews with 35 users and analysis of notified vacancies and guidance documents. The argument is that front-line workers re-create policy as they implement it. They do so in reaction to a series of influences, constraints and incentives. Users therefore receive a service that is a modified version of the official policy. Users do not necessarily accept the policy that they are subjected to. They do not identify with the new managerialist notion of customer service because as benefit recipients they are denied purchasing power, choice and power. Unemployment policy is not delivered uniformly or unilaterally because front-line staff are active in developing work habits that influence the outcomes of policy. Policy is accomplished by staff in practice by categorising users into client types. This is significant because staff represent the state to the citizen in their interaction. Users are also active in accomplishing policy, whether they conform with, contest, negotiate or co-produce policy. Understanding what unemployment policy actually is, and what it means to people, depends on understanding these social processes by which policy emerges in practice.

In 1997, the UK's Labour government introduced several health policy changes, including plans for greater collaboration with private providers. Building on previous cross-sectional research, we explore longitudinal inequities in physician access as these policy changes were materializing. Using GEE models we examine the effect of income and private health insurance (PHI) coverage on access to physicians in the general UK population from 1997 to 2003. The study finds no income inequities in GP access. In contrast, those in the highest income quintile are more likely to access consultants overall (OR:1.10, CI: 1.01,1.19), particularly private consultants (OR:2.49, CI:1.80,3.44). Not surprisingly, PHI is a strong predictor of private consultant access (OR:8.72 CI: 7.04,10.82), but a weak predictor of overall consultant access (OR:1.09, CI:1.01, 1.17). None of these findings exhibited significant time trends across the years of study, thus indicating that the existing inequities remained stable in the UK, despite the aforementioned reforms.

Understanding characteristics of unemployment can contribute to labour market policies. Therefore this thesis investigates gender and ethnic unemployment during the recent 2008-2010 recession and spatial autocorrelation of unemployment using multivariate analysis, decomposition techniques, and panel SAR model which is innovatively adopted to examine the mechanism of causing spatial autocorrelation.

The thesis examines the development of unemployment compensation in Great Britain and West Germany between the mid 1960s and the end of the 1980s. The main objective is to identify the relative importance and interrelation of factors leading to decisions affecting the level, duration and conditions of assistance and insurance benefits for unemployed people in a comparative context. Policy decisions can only partly be explained, it is argued, with reference to political, economic and ideological factors. Benefit changes were influenced by the level of unemployment, the perception of unemployment as a social and political problem, economic developments, economic policy doctrines adopted by governments, and the composition of governments. However, outcomes were also strongly influenced by different welfare state traditions, principles and institutional arrangements. In West Germany, insurance benefit levels have traditionally been closely related to previous earnings. Income support arrangements for unemployed people are fragmented into separate administrative funding mechanisms, based on three different social security principles. In the traditional British welfare state context the principle of contributory unemployment benefits has remained less developed and inferior to the idea of modest flat-rate income support. Both insurance and assistance benefits are centrally administered and financed. The study seeks to demonstrate that these institutional variables or 'welfare legacies' acted as factors which guided, constrained or facilitated policy decisions to a considerable degree by shaping interests and narrowing the scope of seriously considered policy options.

This Thesis is focused on the British insurance company Lloyd's of London. The first part describes the UK insurance market and its long history and regulation. A specific part is the London insurance market, where Lloyd's has an important position. The main part is devoted to the characterization of Lloyd's and its analysis of the insurance business. It focuses on the structure and management of the insurance company and introduces the individual classes of insurance, which are casualty, property, marine, energy, motor, aviation and reinsurance. The aim of this thesis is to present to the public how Lloyd's business works and to identify its market power and behavior in crisis situations. At the end of this thesis a detailed scope of action for Lloyd's is presented.

In recent decades, research from across the social sciences has demonstrated a strong, consistent and causal link between unemployment and a wide range of negative outcomes. These outcomes go beyond economic problems, incorporating issues such as low well-being, poor health and weak social capital. During the same time, successive UK governments have expanded the use of active labour market programmes (ALMPs): a wide range of interventions that aim to move unemployed people closer to the labour market. ALMPs have been widely evaluated since becoming a central part of UK social policy, yet the majority of studies focus almost exclusively on economic outcomes, such as re-employment and wage levels. This is despite the weight of evidence suggesting unemployment is as much a social problem as an economic one. This discrepancy has led to a small but growing body of research suggesting that ALMPs might play a role in modifying some of the health and social costs of unemployment: beyond simply moving people closer to the labour market. Using a mixed methods research design, this study examines whether ALMPs achieve this by considering four key questions. First, are ALMPs associated with higher well-being, health and social capital compared to the alternative of 'open unemployment'? Second, if there is an association, how robust is this and is there any evidence of a causal function? Third, does the context of an ALMP - such as the specific type of scheme and the kind of participant - matter for understanding outcomes? And fourthly, how and why do people's experiences of unemployment and ALMPs shape their health and well-being? The findings presented in this thesis offer five original contributions to the study of the health and social effects of ALMPs. First, there is a dichotomy in the effects of ALMPs: participants have higher well-being than the openly unemployed but similar health and social capital levels. Second, ALMPs are most effective in changing how participants feel about and evaluate their lives but are largely unsuccessful in mitigating negative emotions like anxiety. These two findings are evident in both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, suggesting the possibility of a causal function of ALMPs. Together, the findings suggest that the positive well-being effects of ALMPs are not necessarily linked to improved health or social capital but because participants begin to think about their lives in a different, more positive way. Third, well-being gains are experienced by both short-term and long-term unemployed people but disappear upon re-employment. This finding has an important implication for policy, with ALMPs seemingly effective as a short-term protective well-being measure. Fourth, this is the first UK study to explore whether ALMPs work more effectively for different types of unemployed people. The findings presented in Chapter Seven show that work-oriented ALMPs are more successful than employment-assistance programmes, whilst men, younger people, those with fewer qualifications, lower occupational status and lower pre-programme well-being experience the largest benefits of participation. Fifth, the qualitative analysis presented in Chapter Eight argues that ALMPs worked best when schemes reversed the perceived ‘losses’ associated with unemployment. Three processes of loss were identified - agency loss, functional loss and status loss – which, it is contended, help explain both the observed effects of ALMPs and the broader experience of unemployment. The thesis concludes with policy suggestions for improving the capacity of ALMPs to mediate the experience of unemployment.

In the UK and Saudi Arabia, it is necessary for the contracting parties in insurance contracts to comply with the requirement of the doctrine of utmost good faith. In recent years, the doctrine of utmost good faith and the mutual duties of the contracting parties have developed in different ways in each jurisdiction. Both jurisdictions provide consumer protection in insurance markets by Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representation) Act 2012 in the UK and Insurance Consumer Protection Principles 2014 in Saudi Arabia. However, there are many differences between the conduct of each jurisdiction since the coming into force of the Insurance Act 2015 in the UK, which revolutionised the insurance law in several key areas. This thesis particularly aims to critically analyse the reform of the doctrine of utmost good faith and looks at how the current reform impacts on the interpretation of this doctrine between the UK and Saudi jurisdictions. This study critically analyses the insureds’ pre-contractual duties for consumers and businesses in the UK with a comparison to Saudi law.

Les révolutions industrielles ont été caractérisées par un rôle des banques joué en premier via le capital circulant, plus que via le financement du capital fixe. Le poids du commerce extérieur dans l’économie Britannique du dix-neuvième siècle pose la question de l’importance d’une catégorie de crédits, les crédits à l’exportation. Le dix-neuvième a vu la croissance des financements des exportations par prêts, ces prêts rencontrant l’engouement aussi bien des banques que des entreprises. A partir de la mi-dix-neuvième siècle, le role historiquement joué par l’escompte connait un déclin relatif, concrétisé par un financement des exportations par prêts devenant dominant dans l’actif des banques. La prolifération des banques, malgré les crises récurrentes, et la concurrence interbancaire qui en a découlé, ont joué dans le sens d’une réduction du rationnement au niveau du financement des exportations. La pression sur le rationnement est d’autant plus notable que les structures de l’assurance-crédit à l’exportation n’ont commencé à s’affirmer qu’en fin de dix-neuvième siècle, et n’ont commencé à bénéficier du soutien de l’Etat qu’après la première guerre mondiale. Malgré cela, les marchés proches des pays d’Europe continentale ont été dépassés en direction des marchés géographiquement éloignés, en principe caractérisés par un niveau de risque plus élevé. L’interaction entre l’élargissement des débouchés à l’exportation et la croissance de la production a bénéficié de l’appui d’une offre de crédits à l’exportation relativement peu sensible au risque. D’où la possibilité de parler de révolutions industrielle, financière, et commerciale. Du point de vue institutionnel, si l’Etat a essentiellement agi dans le sens de l’élargissement de l’accès aux marchés pour les exportations Britanniques, la banque d’Angleterre a, pour sa part, rempli le rôle vital de préteur ultime, permettant de maintenir le flux de financement en direction des entreprises, via le refinancement des banques
The industrial revolutions were characterized by a role of banks played mainly via the circulating capital, rather than via the financing of fixed capital. The weight of the foreign trade in the nineteenth century British economy raises the question of the importance of a category of credits, the export credits. The nineteenth century saw the growth of loan-financed exports, these loans meeting the craze of banks as well as that of companies. From the mid-nineteenth century, the role historically played by the discount witnessed a relative decline, concretized by a financing of the exports by loans which became dominant among bank activities. The proliferation of banks, in spite of the recurring crises and the interbank competition which ensued from it, resulted in a reduction of the rationing at the level of exports financing. The pressure on the rationing is more considerable than the structures of export credit-insurance began to assert themselves only at the end of nineteenth century, and began to benefit from state support only after World War I. Nevertheless, markets close to countries of continental Europe were exceeded in the direction of geographically remote markets, usually characterized by a level of higher risk. The interaction between export outlets extension and production growth benefited from the support of an export credits offer relatively less risk sensitive. Hence the possibility to speak about industrial, financial and commercial revolutions. From an institutional point of view, if the state has essentially acted in favor of the extension of access to markets for the British exports, the Bank Of England has played, for its part, the vital role of ultimate lender, allowing to maintain the flow of financing in the direction of companies, via the refinancing of banks

Defence date: 13 December 2004
Examining board: Michael Haliassos, Department of Economics, University of Cyprus ; Andrea Ichino, European University Institute ; Karl Schlag, Supervisor, European University Institute ; Jan C. van Ours, Department of Economics, Tilburg University

Defence date: 19 September 1994
Examining Board: Prof. John Micklewright, EUI, Supervisor ; Prof. Geert Ridder, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam ; Prof. Jules Theeuwes, University of Leiden ; Prof. Ugo Trivellato, University of Padova ; Prof. Robert Waldmann, EUI.
First made available online: 28 July 2016

Defence date: 11 November 2005
Examining board: Prof. Jochen Clasen (University of Stirling) ; Prof. Colin Crouch (University of Warwick, EUI) ; Dr. Bruno Palier (CEVIPOF-Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris) ; Prof. Martin Rhodes (EUI, Supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017