This paper addresses the issue of overeducation and undereducation using for the first time a British dataset which contains explicit information on the level of required education to enter a job across the generality of occupations. Three key issues within the overeducation literature are addressed. First, what determines the existence of over and undereducation and to what extent are over and undereducation substitutes for experience, tenure and training? Second, to what extent are over and undereducation temporary or permanent phenomena? Third, what are the returns to over and undereducation and do certain stylized facts discovered for the US and a number of European countries hold for Britain?

This study argues that religion and enterprise enjoy a complex and interdependent relationship. Analyzing the relationship between society, religion, and enterprise illustrates that religion operates as an environmental munificence factor. Investigating the relationship between the individual religion and enterprise shows that religion affects believers’ entrepreneurial activity, influencing the decision to become an entrepreneur, enterprise management, and the entrepreneur's contact network. Turning to theory, enterprise, and religion, we note that the spectre of Weber still haunts some analyses of the entrepreneurial middle class, and the literature does not clarify the extent of religiosity among entrepreneurs. Using quantitative techniques to study the level of religiosity among a sample of British entrepreneurs we found it to be similar to that of non-entrepreneurial samples. The low levels of religious belief and practice in Britain suggests that religion may not be a significant environmental munificence factor for British entrepreneurship.

Using data from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey, this paper examines the job finding methods of different ethnic groups in the UK. Our empirical findings suggest that, though personal networks are a popular method of finding a job for the ethnic minorities, the foreign born and those who identify themselves as non-British, they are not necessarily the most effective either in terms of gaining employment or in terms of the level of job achieved. However, there are some important differences across ethnic groups with some groups losing out disproportionately from using personal networks.

The church attendance decision of individual economic agents is analysed within a Becker-style allocation of time framework. Using an ordered logit model with data derived from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) separate attendance equations are estimated for males and females. The empirical results, in line with previous North American studies, suggest that labour income variables do account for some of the variation in attendance. In addition, attendance is found to be correlated with factors such as denominational affiliation, educational attainment and intensity of belief.

For the first time the issue of overeducation is addressed for the UK. Substantial amounts of over and undereducation are found. The evidence supports the view that formal education and other components of human capital are substitutes for the over- and undereducated.