The impact of the national minimum wage on the apparel industry

This analysis of the NMW’s initial impact in the apparel industry focuses on organisational and institutional factors in explaining the effects on pay and related issues. The NMW had a marked effect on national terms and conditions, in particular raising the minimum earnings level. At the local level, it impacted directly on the pay of a small number of employees in almost half the 42 organisations surveyed in the East Midlands and Northern Ireland. These tended to be the larger employing units facing foreign competition and selling into the domestic market. Also, in some workplaces, the NMW adversely affected the piecework system. The reaction of local management to these changes is discussed.     

An evaluation of heuristic methods for determining the best table mix in full-service restaurants

Little research has been done on the optimal mix of supply in service businesses that maximizes revenue. Our research context is the full-service restaurant table mix problem. This problem, which is quite new to the literature, finds the optimal number of different size tables for a restaurant to maximize its value (revenue or contribution) generating potential. Specifically, we examine the effectiveness of eight heuristic techniques for the problem using two experiments. The first experiment uses data from a 240-seat full-service restaurant to evaluate all eight heuristics, while the second experiment investigates the performance of selected heuristics under a broader set of environmental factors. The results of our first experiment showed that the better of the simulated annealing heuristic variants yielded the optimal solution in seven of eight test problems, averaging within 0.1% of optimal. Our second experiment showed that the simplest of the models we investigated yielded solutions within 1% of the simulated annealing solution. Finally, we observed that altering the table mix on a daily basis increased performance by over 1% compared to maintaining the optimal weekly table mix.     

THE ESTIMATION OF OFF-FARM LABOUR SUPPLY FUNCTIONS IN SASKATCHEWAN

In this paper, a farm-household utility maximising model which incorporates the time of both the farm operator and his wife is developed. The model is then used to estimate the off-farm labour supply of the operator and his wife, and develop policy recommendations concerning further increases in off-farm labour participation by farmers and their wives. A Heckman procedure is employed to test for sample selectivity bias. The results suggest that the supply of off-farm labour is inelastic for men but quite responsive to the estimated shadow wage for women.     

Management buy-outs,trade unions and employee ownership

Management buy-outs developed rapidly throughout the 1980s in the UK and continental Europe. The shift to managerial and employee ownership involved, has major implications for trade unions and industrial relations. This article examines these issues using survey and case study evidence from the UK.     

EXCHANGE RATE RISK AND EXPORT REVENUE IN TAIWAN

Abstract. The effect of exchange rate risk on export revenue in Taiwan between 1979 and 2001 is investigated in a bivariate GARCH-M model that simultaneously estimates time-varying risk. Depreciation is found to stimulate export revenue in domestic currency, but the quantitative impact is small and any associated increase in exchange risk has a negative impact. Implications for economic policy are discussed.