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Highlights from four of this year’s interviews consider the theme of 'discrimination and disadvantage’. We have some 'Christmas Cheer’, as the interviews show how far we have come to improve the situation of women, people from ethnic minority groups, LGBT communities and young people from poorer backgrounds. However, the first interview with Dr Jo Blanden, shows how hard it is to make further improvements to the early years experiences of young people. In the second interview with Prof. Emma Parry, we see how research investigating generational differences risks stereotyping different age groups. Prof. Lisa Webley sets out the various waves of policy that have attempted to improve the situation of women and other groups facing discrimination, and continuing challenges faced by the Law profession, where improvements have been glacial in recent years. Finally, in the interview with Vicky Pryce, we see where this debate can lead - if things are not getting better with current approaches, Vicky argues that for women we need to consider the 'nuclear option' of quotas. These are the challenges for our New Year!

The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, is reportedly obsessed with the issue of productivity; whilst most of the electorate remain baffled. We talk to Vicky Pryce, Chief Economic Adviser and board member at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), who draws on her experience of being ‘responsible’ for productivity targets under the last Labour Government. Numerous explanations have been put forward for the UK’s poor productivity performance since 2008. Recent research suggests we have a particularly long tail of poorly performing companies in the UK, who fail to adopt innovations of the leading 1%. We consider this diagnosis next to many others, and speculate on what a newly formulated Industrial Strategy might do to help.

The New Labour government introduced a national minimum wage (NMW) in 1999. At first this was opposed by the Conservative party, but they have since joined a growing political consensus. The Low Pay Commission (LPC) are tasked with recommending NMW rates that 'help as many low-paid workers as possible without any significant adverse impact on employment or the economy’. The LPC’s apparent success in achieving this, may be one reason for growing political census, so it is perhaps worrying that a National Living Wage (NLW) is being set without these considerations. Len Shackleton, Professor of Economics at the University of Buckingham and Editorial and Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, sets out these issues and more in a recent IEA paper on Restructuring Minimum Wages. Prof. Shackleton argues that the system has become overly complex and recommendations made by the Taylor Review will only add to this complexity. In this interview we consider his proposals and what the future may hold for UK minimum wages.

Recent decades have seen radical change in the way that conflict is dealt with in UK workplaces. Collective industrial action has been replaced by pursuit of individual employment rights through litigation, via Employment Tribunals (ETs). Richard Saundry is Professor of HRM & Employment Relations at Plymouth University Business School. He has written extensively on workplace conflict and brings a wealth of experience, including time spent at NUM HQ at the start of the 1990s. Peter and him consider why employees in certain types of firm report higher levels of conflict; whether ‘vexatious’ ET claims represent a significant cost to firms and discuss how conflict is resolved in the modern workplace. In this modern setting, what role is there for the union movement and what are the implications of Brexit?

Some projections suggest a third of UK jobs are at high risk of computerisation. The impact of technical progress has been debated since Karl Marx predicted advancement of the means of production to the point where abundance would end the division of labour. J. R. Shackleton, Professor of Economics at the University of Buckingham and Editorial and Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, considers the modern debate in Robocalypse Now?. Prof. Shackleton argues that estimates of the number of jobs-at-risk are excessive; that regulatory and legal barriers to automation will result in slower than anticipated change, and that the last 200 years show how new employment opportunities are created to replace jobs lost to automation. We consider these various debates and ask whether the emergence of AI and robotics mean that, this time it’s different.

Since the late 1990s, there has been a push to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children - with governments viewing free early education as key to the achievement of this aim. Dr Jo Blanden, Reader in Economics and Research Director of the School of Economics at the University of Surrey, joins Peter Urwin to talk of her work investigating whether free nursery care impacts children’s educational performance. Overall the suggestion is that these policies have been associated with a large amount of "dead weight" - using taxpayers' money to support people in doing things that they would have done anyway. They consider whether the findings present a challenge to the suggestion that early years interventions provide best returns; or is it the specifics of this policy that need rethinking?

In this interview, Peter Urwin considers the ‘collective failures’ suffered by the polling industry in recent years; from their inability to predict the 2015 British general election outcome, to Brexit, to Trump. Joining him is Professor Patrick Sturgis, who discusses findings from his chairing of the British Polling Council/Market Research Society Inquiry into the 2015 General Election Polls; and in his role as Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Political Polling and Digital Media. They explore whether the same mistakes are being made by Pollsters across these different ‘failures', and whether it is getting harder to predict outcomes. Plus, they ask whether analysis of social media presents an opportunity to help capture voter sentiment – or is the media industry part of the problem?

Interest in generational diversity has exploded since the turn of the 21st century, especially in Marketing and HRM. While many researchers are supportive of the concept of generations, a growing number have questioned the validity of the idea that people are psychologically different according to when they were born. In this interview, Peter Urwin speaks to Cranfield University’s Professor Emma Parry to discover what the research has to say about Generations X, Y and Z; why the findings from existing studies must be treated with caution; and why a lot of this work risks stereotyping certain age groups.

In the second episode of our new programme, Peter Urwin is joined by Professor Lisa Webley, Chair in Legal Education and Research at the University of Birmingham's Law School, to explore the increasing lack of diversity as one progresses up the ladder of the legal career. Lisa describes the situation in various branches of the profession and sets out the findings from her research, which provide insight into why many women and BAME lawyers do not make it to the top. What actions can government, employers and professional bodies take to improve the situation?

In the very first episode of our brand new programme Economist Questions, host Peter Urwin is joined by economist and author, Vicky Pryce, to talk about one of her latest books: “Why Women Need Quotas”. Despite herself having enjoyed a successful career spanning business, academia and government, women still experience discrimination in the workplace. From massive pay gaps across the professions and male-dominated senior positions in all walks of life, a lack of role models and unconscious bias are all barriers to women climbing the career ladder – and that's even before counting the professional cost of starting a family. In this interview, Vicky speaks to Peter about why she believes there is only one solution: women need quotas.