Colliery Closures and the Decline of the UK Coal Industry

In the 10 years after the 1984–5 miners' strike, employment by British Coal and the number of pits it operated fell by more than 90%. In this paper data for each of British Coal's collieries are used to analyse the pattern of pit closure. The pits that closed were systematically smaller, less productive and less profitable than those that survived. A model is estimated to capture the degree to which closure decisions reflect performance variables, and it is found that low productivity was the most important indicator of vulnerability to closure. However, closures were by no means exclusively concentrated on the worst performers, and many of the pits that were closed at the end of the period had achieved very large increases in productivity over the years preceding closure.     

Using Compulsory Mobility to Identify School Quality and Peer Effects

Education production functions that feature school and student fixed effects are identified using students' school mobility. However, student mobility is driven by factors like parents' labour market shocks and divorce. Movers experience large achievement drops, are more often minority and free meal students, and sort endogenously into peer groups and school types. We exploit an English institutional feature whereby some students must change schools between grades 2 and 3. We find no evidence of endogenous sorting of such compulsory movers across peer groups or school types. Non‐compulsory movers bias school quality estimates downward by as much as 20% of a SD.     

Union Decline in Britain

This paper considers the rapid decline in unionization that has occurred in Britain since the late 1970s. The overwhelming factor underpinning falling unionization was a failure to organize new establishments set up in the last twenty years or so, thus confirming that developments since 1990 represent a continuation of the pattern revealed in earlier work for the 1980–90 period. The sharpest falls in unionization occurred in private manufacturing establishments set up after 1980. Finally, there is some evidence that it is age of workplace, rather than age of worker, that is the critical age‐based factor behind union decline.     

THE EFFECT OF MINIMUM WAGES ON UK AGRICULTURE

Since the abolition of the Wages Councils in September 1993, agriculture is the only sector in the UK economy covered by any form of minimum wage legislation. However, the recent denunciation of an ILO convention covering minimum wages in agriculture has paved the way for the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Boards. This paper investigates the impact of the system of minimum wages on the level and structure of earnings and employment in agriculture. On wages, our main conclusion is that the minimum wages set by the Agricultural Wages Boards are important determinants of the average level and distribution of earnings in UK agriculture. On employment, our main conclusion is that there is no evidence that minimum wages have reduced the level of employment in agriculture. If anything, our estimates imply a weak positive, though statistically insignificant, impact of minimum wages on employment. This seems to be true when we disaggregate by sex and skill.     

Changes in Union Status, Increased Competition and Wage Growth in the 1980s

This paper reports that unionized firms experienced lower average wage growth than their non-union counterparts between 1984 and 1988. We attempt to evaluate the relative importance of two possible explanatory factors, the union-related legislation of the 1980s, and increases in product market competition. While recognizing that these factors are intertwined, the results suggest the latter is of primary importance.     

Foreign travel and the risk of harm

Systematic data on the risk of fatal and non-fatal injury from external causes to those who travel abroad for purposes of business or pleasure are seldom recorded and are consequently hard to come by. In this paper, the risk of fatal injuries to foreign travellers using historical and newly acquired data from national databases is estimated. Overall, it appears from these data that the risk of fatal injury to foreign travellers lies in the range of 20 to 90 per 100 000 person-years of exposure for many destinations worldwide, although different rates may pertain in selected situations where special conditions apply, for example, where there is heavy participation in risky sports or increased driving. This level of fatal injury risk is not noticeably different from that of staying in one's home country if one lives in a Western-style industrial country, although the types of hazards responsible may vary in type and proportion. With increasing levels of travel, and the growing popularity of more adventurous pursuits, it is possible that risks could be increasing in this sector.     

Wages Councils: Was There a Case for Abolition?

The 1993 Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act removed the remaining minimum wage protection for some 2.5 million low paid workers by abolishing the last 26 UK Wages Councils. The Government's case for abolition rested on three key arguments: (1) minimum wages do little to alleviate poverty since most covered workers do not live in poor households; (2) when in operation, minimum wages reduced employment in covered industries; (3) the problems of poverty that the wages councils were set up to deal with in 1909 are not relevant in today's labour market. In this paper we address each of these points in turn. We find that: (a) 50 per cent of families with at least one earner being paid wages council rates come from the poorest 20 per cent of families; (b) the existing evidence suggests that abolishing the Wages Councils is unlikely to create jobs; (c) the widening earnings distribution in the UK means that low pay is an increasingly important determinant of poverty. If anything, there appears to be an increasing need for minimum wage legislation in the UK.