Management School seminars

'Running Up that Hill: Fitness in the Face of Recession' seminar

Join our upcoming 'Running Up that Hill: Fitness in the Face of Recession' seminar with Professor Alex Bryson.

Speaker: Professor Alex Bryson (University College London)

Hosted by: University of Liverpool Management School's Economics Group

Open to: Management School PhD students and academic staff, with no sign up needed

Date: Wednesday 1 May 2024

Time: 2-3.15pm

Place: Sherrington Building, Ashton Street - Seminar Room 1


Abstract

Drawing on 28 million observations on people’s running times in a free weekly 5 kilometre running event, Parkrun, we examine whether labour market conditions affect fitness.

Running times improve during recessions for men and women aged 50 and above but worsen for men aged 20-49 and women aged 20-29, suggesting that the fall in the opportunity costs of fitness during recessions is the dominant factor for elderly runners, whereas the income effect induced by unemployment dominates for prime age workers.

Participation in Parkrun is not sensitive to the business cycle so our results are not driven by compositional changes.

 

Speaker

Alex Bryson is Professor of Quantitative Social Science at University College London’s Social Research Institute, and a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and WISERD.

He is Chief Editor of Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society and an editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A and the Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership.

 

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