The paper investigates the extent to which life-satisfaction is biased by peercomparison by looking at the relative value attached to the different domains of life-satisfaction, as suggested by Easterlin (Economics and happiness: framing the analysis, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005), by social group. We postulate that group membership influences the ranking of the satisfaction domains affecting subjective well-being which allows individuals to go back to their individual threshold over time. Using ordered probit models with random effects, the evidence for professional (self-employed vs. employee) and social (male vs. female) groups using the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society-UK Household Longitudinal Study from 1996 to 2014 shows that the ranking of the satisfaction domains is group-based suggesting a "keeping up with the Joneses" effect linked to the housing bubble.

Stakeholder theory has been an incredibly powerful tool for understanding and improving organisations, and their relationship with other actors in society. That these critical ideas are now accepted within mainstream business is due in no small part to the influence of stakeholder theory. However, improvements to stakeholder engagement through stakeholder theory have tended to help stakeholders who are already somewhat powerful within organisational settings, while those who are less powerful continue to be marginalised and routinely ignored. In this paper, we argue that one possible obstacle preventing less powerful stakeholders from speaking up and/or being heard by organisations is found at the ontological level, where we have identified an 'essentialist self' underpinning the stakeholder concept. By deconstructing the stakeholder concept through how it is defined, discussed and debated, and linking this back to the practical consequences of the theory for the least powerful stakeholders, we are able to make three contributions. One, through our deconstruction, it is clear that at an ontological level, stakeholder theory is underpinned by an implicit, and problematic, assumption of the 'essentialist self', where the organisation is treated as the 'natural, universal self', and anyone not closely resembling this narrow (and unrealistic) view of self is treated as 'other'. Two, we build on the work of authors such as Wicks et al. (Bus Ethics Q 4(4):475-497, 1994), who highlight the need for consideration of the self within stakeholder theory. We thus take our findings from contribution one and begin to build a more holistic view of the self within the stakeholder concept, where each self is encouraged to recognise common selves outside and inside the corporation. Third, we link the theoretical discussion to the practical by discussing some imperfect ways in which a more holistic, enriched stakeholder concept might begin to help mitigate marginalisation for some stakeholders.

This contribution explores the possibility that financialization has created identity preference effects by linking managerial and financial occupations to high earnings, and in turn high earnings to the social status of the dominant demographic group in the US labor force, namely white men. The empirical results confirm that a wage premium exists for individuals working in managerial and financial occupations and that this finance wage premium is not equally distributed among all gender and ethnic groups. For each ethnic group, men have taken an increasing share of the finance wage premium at the expense of women. More specifically, white and, in smaller amount, Hispanic men have enjoyed a disproportionate share of the finance wage premium. Financialization has thus been neither race nor gender neutral. In this respect, the gender and race stratification effects of the Great Recession are at least in part the long-run outcome of structural processes generated by the financialization process.

Throughout his career Geoff Harcourt has constantly and consistently highlighted the role of social norms and collective decisions in his study of modern economies. In doing so he has put a great deal of emphasis on the distribution of income between different social groups, especially so when concerned with the labour market. This paper attempts to celebrate this particular aspect of his numerous contributions to economics by highlighting the role of social norms in influencing earnings across occupations and demographic groups in the US. Social norms generate hierarchy, economic and non-economic inequalities among ascriptively distinguished groups. Drawing on the stratification and identity economics literatures, this paper proposes a novel theoretical and empirical framework for analysing the effects of financialisation on the earnings dynamics of gender and race groups, a framework that is consistent with discrimination as a source of racial and gender inequality. The empirical methodology utilised in the form of long-run cointegrating relationships of groups' earnings across occupations, assesses whether a pattern of social norms on wage distribution emerges over time. The results of this study show that over the past 30 years social norms have exacerbated the stratification of the US labour market. JEL Classification: E24, G20, J31, J71Keywords: Financialisation, Great Recession, Income Inequalities, Race Stratification, Gender Stratification, Social Norms Acknowledgments:The authors of this paper would very much like to thank the two anonymous referees of this Journal for their insightful comments and suggestions, which have helped to improve the paper considerably. They also gratefully acknowledge the comments and suggestions of participants at the International Conference "The Future of Capitalism", Robinson College, University of Cambridge (UK), 25 th -26 th June 2011. Identity Economics Meets Financialisation: Gender, Race and Occupational Stratification in the US Labour MarketAbstract: Throughout his career Geoff Harcourt has constantly and consistently highlighted the role of social norms and collective decisions in his study of modern economies. In doing so he has put a great deal of emphasis on the distribution of income between different social groups, especially so when concerned with the labour market. This paper attempts to celebrate this particular aspect of his numerous contributions to economics by highlighting the role of social norms in influencing earnings across occupations and demographic groups in the US. Social norms generate hierarchy, economic and non-economic inequalities among ascriptively distinguished groups. Drawing on the stratification and identity economics literatures, this paper proposes a novel theoretical and empirical framework for analysing the effects of financialisation on the earnings dynamics of gender and race groups, a framework that is consistent with discrimination as a source of racial and gender inequality. The empirical methodology utilised in the...

In 2001, China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the US recession put pressure on maquiladora workers' wages. The result was an increase in the gender wage gap. At the firm level, this increase is not discriminatory, in the sense that the lower income entitlement for women is socially accepted at the household level. This paper uses Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis to explain the gender wage gap as a matter of “fair-wage constraints” that differ across genders, which are, in turn, due to evolving social norms of fairness in reservation wages for men and women within households. Empirical evidence for changes in gender wages gaps across industries between 1997 and 2006 is found to be consistent with this argument.fairness, wages, gender, maquiladora industry,