MONITORING ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE POVERTY: “NOT ENOUGH” IS NOT THE SAME AS “MUCH LESS”

Financial poverty indicators assess which people have few financial resources and are thereby at risk of having an unacceptably low living standard. Most countries use one or several “official” poverty indicators, but they typically use either an absolute or a relative benchmark to determine what is unacceptable; absolute benchmarks are based on basic needs or rights while relative benchmarks depend on what is considered to be a “normal” living standard. Applying the absolute U.S. and the relative EU poverty indicators on the U.S. and 15 EU member states, this research shows that it makes sense to use both benchmarks.     

Minimum Wage Impacts from a Prespecified Research Design: Canada 1981–1997

Neumark (2001 ) used the novel methodology of a prespecified research design to estimate the employment effect of minimum wage changes. We conducted our analysis in the “spirit” of this methodology based on Canadian data from 1981 to 1997. Our minimum wage elasticities are substantial, typically in the range of ?0.14 to ?0.44, with ?0.30 being a reasonable point estimate, and with the effects being larger after lagged adjustments.     

Making Profession and State, 1907 to 1914: The ACPA's First Charter Attempt

The Australasian Corporation of Public Accountants (ACPA) was founded in 1907, the first Australian national association of public accountants and their clerks. From 1907 to 1914 it endeavoured, against the opposition of both Australian and British associations, to obtain a royal charter. The ACPA's charter attempt brought into focus struggles within the emergent accountancy'profession'both in Australia and Britain. It also became implicated in the process of state formation during a formative period in Australia's political history. Using hitherto unexplored archival material, this study shows that the ACPA's charter attempt: (a) was a serious attempt to drive a wedge between the'public'and'commercial'accountant; and (b) raised issues about the legislative and executive domains of Australian state and Federal governments both inter se and in relation to Britain. The study suggests that the failure of the attempt can be ascribed to the interaction of (a) and (b). It also suggests that one of the outcomes of the attempt, namely, the (re-)assertion of authority of Australian state governments over accountancy matters, helped to diminish the hegemony of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, eventually formed in 1928, over public accountancy in Australia.     

THE AGGREGATE DEMAND FOR LABOUR IN AUSTRALIA: A META-ANALYSIS*

In this paper, meta-analysis techniques are applied to 34 studies of the aggregate demand for Australian labour. Inverse associations between the real wage and employment and demand and unemployment are established, and positive associations between demand and employment and the real wage and unemployment are established. The associations are stronger with respect to the real wage. The results suggest that at least two-thirds of the variation in estimates across studies is artifactual and is due to specification differences. It is argued in this paper that the available studies are of limited value to policy formulation. No single empirical study can provide definitive measures of a particular parameter. This guarantees that substantial numbers of empirical studies of the more important parameters describing labor demand will have been produced. (Hamermesh, 1993, p. 61)     

Asset Allocation Via The Conditional First Exit Time or How To Avoid Outliving Your Money

The risk of outliving your money (or shortfall) with low risk, low return investments is very often more serious than the risk of losing money on high risk investments, until quite late in life. A stochastic process model incorporating mortality tables for men and women of retirement age, random rates of return and fixed initial wealth and desired level of consumption provides the analytical tool. A simulation using Canadian mortality tables and rates of return shows that almost all retirees should invest some of their wealth in equity, and for many the optimal allocation is 70–100% equity. The risk of shortfall is surprisingly high for a reasonable range of values of the variables, especially for an allocation of 100% in treasury bills. Women face much greater risk of shortfall than men. The analytical model also permits calculation of the distribution of the bequest and hence allows an individual to trade off changes in shortfall risk against changes in the expected bequest to the heirs.     

Rules and reality: quantifying the practice of apprenticeship in early modern England1

This article uses recently digitized samples of apprentices and masters in London and Bristol to quantify the practice of apprenticeship in the late seventeenth century. Apprenticeship appears much more fluid than is traditionally understood. Many apprentices did not complete their terms of indenture; late arrival and early departure from the master's household were widespread. Other apprentices appear to have been absent temporarily, returning to the master shortly before the end of their indenture. Regression analysis indicates that the patterns of presence and absence broadly reflect the resources and external opportunities available to apprentices.     

Taxation,warfare, and the early fourteenth century ‘crisis’ in the north: Cumberland lay subsidies, 1332–13481

Recent research into the impact of Anglo‐Scottish conflict on northern England's economy has become increasingly sophisticated, using local estate accounts to enhance understanding of the role of war in the 'crisis' of the early fourteenth century. Yet taxation data also remains an important source on these issues, not least because of its wide geographical coverage. Using a rich series of lay subsidy documents for Cumberland, this article concludes that the direct impact of Scottish raids was only one of several determinants of economic fortunes. More significantly, reconstructing the process of taxation shows that non‐violent resistance to state levies was as responsible as war damage for a decline in revenue from the county.