Workplace bargaining in hospitals and schools: threat or opportunity for the unions?

Government policy has aimed to encourage the development of workplace bargaining in both the education and health services. This article traces those developments and looks at trade union opposition to the shift from national to workplace bargaining     

A tale of three schools: insights on autocorrelations of short-horizon stock returns

This article reexamines the autocorrelation patterns of short-horizonstock returns. We document empirical results which imply thatthese autocorrelations have been overstated in the existingliterature. Based on several new insights, we provide supportfor a market efficiency-based explanation of the evidence. Ouranalysis suggests that institutional factors are the most likelysource of the autocorrelation patterns.     

Unemployment persistence

We estimate dynamic panel data models of unemployment incidencefor men using the British Household Panel Survey. Econometricissues concerning unobserved individual heterogeneity, genuinestate dependence, and the initial conditions problems are addressedin detail. We find strong evidence of state dependence consistentwith the scarring theory of unemployment - an individual's previousunemployment experience has implications for his future labourmarket experience. This suggests that policies reducing shortrun employment incidence will have longer-run effects by reducingthe equilibrium or natural rate of unemployment.     

Real interest rates and macroeconomic activity

While standard discussions of the transmission mechanism ofmonetary policy tend to assume a strong and negative link betweenreal interest rates and real macroeconomic activity, and thisappears to some extent to be borne out by simulation of large-scalemacroeconometric models, the empirical evidence suggests thatthe link between real interest rates and macroeconomic aggregatessuch as consumption and investment is, in fact, somewhat tenuous.The weak link between interest rates and aggregate consumptionmay be explained at a theoretical level, while the apparentlyweak link between interest rates and investment is more puzzling,although it may be related to neglect of issues such as uncertaintyand the irreversibility of investment in empirical studies.Similarly, evidence on the link between real interest ratesand economic growth is mixed, and this may be related to non-linearitiesin the relationship. The survey highlights the need for furtherresearch in this area.