This abstract highlights the significant positive influence of lifelong learning on both individual employee performance and broader organizational effectiveness. In today's dynamic and ever-evolving work environment, the concept of lifelong learning stands as a cornerstone for individual and organizational growth. This study investigates the profound impact of lifelong learning initiatives on employee performance within various professional settings. The findings underscore the pivotal role of lifelong learning in fostering a culture of adaptability, skill enrichment, and heightened problem-solving capabilities among employees. As employees engage in continuous education, upskilling, and professional development, a direct and positive effect on individual performance is observed. The acquisition of new competencies and knowledge positively influences productivity, innovation, and overall job proficiency. Moreover, the study revealed that a commitment to lifelong learning not only contributes to improved individual performance but also impacts organizational outcomes. Organizations that encourage a culture of continuous learning see higher levels of employee engagement, lower turnover rates, and greater levels of innovation and flexibility. A learning-centric workplace such as this leads to improved organizational performance and a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The abstract closes by arguing for the incorporation of lifelong learning initiatives into organizational strategy, emphasizing their role in improving employee performance and cultivating a resilient and adaptive workforce capable of managing the changing needs of the modern workplace.

This study was conducted using the dynamic panel two-stage least squares system generalized methods of moments (2SLS-system GMM) to examine how UK companies made capital structure decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrary to expectations, firms opted to reduce their debt exposure during the pandemic. Tobin’s Q was the most significant determinant of capital structure, as it mitigated total debt by 0.25% during the pandemic. This result aligns with the pecking order theory, suggesting that firms prefer internal financing over debt. Simultaneously, combined scores (ESG) and the decomposed environment (E), social (S), and governance (G) scores individually and paired with the COVID-19 dummy negatively affected short-term debt by 0.012%, 0.015%, 0.0068%, and 0.00434%, respectively. This study’s results highlight the significance of firms adopting less debt-heavy policies during periods of heightened uncertainty to effectively manage financial risk. This result underscores the importance of prudent financial risk management strategies for navigating the challenges posed by sudden crises. Our findings suggest that a complex interplay of factors influences capital structure decisions during crises, with debt reduction and prudent risk management emerging as critical strategies.

This article measures the extent of – and unrecorded income generated by – informal employment in a micro economy characterized by poor governance. Household survey and census data are used to estimate the number of informal workers in Northern Cyprus and analyse the characteristics of informal employment, for the period 2004–11. Informal workers are mostly comprised of citizens with no social security registration, illegally employed immigrants or second‐job holders who have not registered their second jobs. In terms of value added, the estimated size of the informal economy is 9.1 per cent and 12.2 per cent of GNP in 2006 and 2011, respectively.

In this paper, we use an exogenous policy variation in the labour market to determine the wage gap between formally and informally employed workers. For our purposes, ‘informal employment’ describes employees who are not officially registered with any social security scheme. We use self-reported employee registration status to identify such workers, but the choice of working unregistered is not exogenous. Nevertheless, through an amnesty that was extended to only some workers in the labour market, we reduce the endogeneity problem, enabling estimation of the wage gap between these two groups. Our two-stage least square estimates reveal that the hourly wage penalty of working in the shadows is as high as 59%, and the monthly salary penalty is around 66%. Moreover, the wage gap is higher (as high as 70%) for those working in the services sector, as unregistered workers in this sector tend to be low skilled and low educated, and the monitoring of this sector is more difficult. Our analysis contributes to the literature by using an instrumental variable to treat the endogeneity of workers’ registration status. In addition, it shows that people working informally in the services industry receive a higher average wage penalty than other informally employed workers.

Résumé: Les auteurs évaluent l'emploi informel – et les revenus non déclarés qu'il engendre – dans une très petite économie à gouvernance médiocre. Les données d'une enquěte auprès des ménages et d'un recensement leur servent à estimer le nombre de travailleurs en emploi informel à Chypre‐Nord, ainsi que les caractéristiques de cet emploi, entre 2004 et 2011. Les travailleurs concernés sont essentiellement des citoyens non affiliés à la sécurité sociale, des immigrés employés illégalement ou des personnes ayant deux emplois dont un non déclaré. L'économie informelle aurait représenté 9,1 pour cent du PNB en 2006, et 12,2 en 2011.