New technology and banking employment in the EEC

Retail banking is traditionally highly labour-intensive and employment in the industry has been rising steadily for many years. However, new technology is now being introduced which is beginning to have an impact on levels of employment. In the European Economic Community it is likely that productivity will increase only slightly faster than demand up to 1990 and that employment will not fall substantially. After that date, it will almost certainly fall faster. Negotiations between management and unions, at a national and international level, should ensure that the introduction of new labour-saving technology be complemented by reductions in working time and the creation of more stimulating, labour-intensive positions.     

Monitoring technical change and employment

In October 1981 the UK Manpower Services Commission approached the Technology Policy Unit of the University of Aston with the idea of establishing a ‘technology monitor’ to research into the introduction of new technology and its implications on employment and skills. The monitor was to look at specific short-term changes (over five to ten years) in employment levels and patterns that would be of relevance to policy makers in the manpower field. The author, who has led this research, describes the setting up of the monitor, its major aims and possible future developments.     

Headquarters,office employment,and the wave of urbanization in the New York City region

Hierarchical theory suggests that high-density office activity, such as corporate headquarters, epitomizes the concept of agglomeration. This research tests whether office employment in a metropolitan area agglomerates around suburban nodes of specialized office and corporate headquarter activity or if office employment change shifts in response to the wave of urbanization. The location of the Fortune 500 manufacturing and service headquarters and the ratio profiles of office employment within each county are used in the test. We conclude that headquarters are not located in specialized office employment nodes. Rather, the office employment becomes specialized as the county becomes more urbanized.     

The effects of quantitative easing on the integration of UK capital markets

We examine the effects of quantitative easing (QE) on the volatility of and correlation between stocks, short-term bonds and long-term bonds in the UK. Using a multivariate dynamic conditional correlation generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model, we find that volatility in each of the markets experiences a significant increase during the financial crisis that is reversed during the first phase of QE. We find limited effects of the specific occurrence or intensity of QE activity on either the volatility or correlations for these asset classes, but some evidence that volatility persistence experienced temporary shifts during the sample period. We find short-term variability in the correlations between the markets during the crisis and QE periods, but cannot reject the hypothesis that correlations were constant throughout the sample period.     

Foreign direct investment and employment: host country experience

This study investigates the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment creation and wages in Ghana. A simultaneous panel regression model is used in estimating the effect FDI has on employment and wages. The results of this study indicate that FDI has a statistically significant and positive effect on employment levels in Ghana, but has an insignificant effect on wages. FDI can greatly augment domestic efforts by creating more jobs in the economy. The results clearly demonstrate that FDI flows affect employment quantitatively, but not necessarily qualitatively. The study identifies other factors including, productivity, wages, sub-sector, and location as important in influencing employment levels. Also, productivity, labour union, firm size, sub-sector, and location are noted as significant in affecting wages in Ghana. The main value of this paper is in respect of the fact that it provides insight into the effects of FDI flow on employment from a host country perspective. The study recommends that FDI should be considered as an integral part of the Ghanaian economic policy in order to spur on economic growth.     

Quantifying the effects of capital controls in small states

Capital account liberalization can potentially have important effects on the economy. Numerous techniques have been employed in the literature to quantify these restrictions. These include ex-post macroeconomic indicators, regression-based indices and qualitative indices of capital control legislation. This paper evaluates the effect of the removal of capital account controls on small island developing states. In order to evaluate the robustness of the relationship between capital account liberalization and growth, the study uses a bootstrap approach to index construction. This approach allows one to assess the potential effects of differences in index specification as well as explain inconsistencies reported in the published literature. The results reported in the study suggest that the relationship between capital account liberalization and growth is fragile but positive. These results imply that the countries should approach capital account liberalization with caution, as simply removing restrictions does not guarantee growth.     

Quantifying tax effects under policy foresight

Studies of tax effects make the conventional information assumption that changes in period-t taxes become known at t. Legislative lags, however, imply that news arrives before tax changes take place. Under policy foreknowledge, the conventional information structure is therefore misspecified. Simulations of a standard neoclassical growth model suggest that foresight of only one quarter can distort substantially the estimates of tax effects obtained under the no-foresight assumption. Also, it is crucial to model capital and labor taxes separately: anticipated changes in these two tax policies have opposite effects on consumption, investment, labor, and output before policy realization.     

就业视角下资环专业实践教学体系优化

实践教学是资源环境与城乡规划管理专业教学体系的重要组成部分,直接决定毕业生质量。基于高校毕业生就业难的问题,以资源环境与城乡规划管理专业为例,分析实践教学体系存在的问题,即专业特色不突出、定位不准确,实践课程薄弱,师资学科背景差异大。提出实践教学体系优化建议,即改革教学体系,突出专业特色,把握专业发展方向,强化技术课程,完善师资引进方案及培训体系,提高师资实践教学能力,加强实践教学研究。     

Disclosure on climate change: Analysing the UK ETS effects

The objective of this paper is to explore the nature of disclosure on climate change in annual and standalone reports of organisations who took part in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS). This article uses content analysis to codify disclosure in order to compare disclosure in different media as well as the possible effect that membership in an emissions trading scheme may have had on reporting. The results suggest the UK ETS was associated with differences in disclosure. This study contributes to the literature by providing a longitudinal study in two disclosure media in the UK ETS context.     

Evaluation of the long-term effects of technological trends on the structure of employment

A method is proposed to project the effects of new technologies on employment structure, utilizing technology-specific information. A three-dimensional technology evaluation scheme is developed based on sectors of the economy, fields of application of new technologies, and mechanisms through which new technologies influence key economic variables. Rated impacts of each field of application via each mechanism for each sector can then be ascribed an ordinate value, with a further round of judgment to aggregate over different technologies, mechanisms and sectors. The approach is applied to project changes in the sectoral structure of employment in Germany in the 1990s if the diffusion of new technologies is accelerated.     

The effects of zoning on population and employment density

This article examines zoning's impacts on population and employment density. It develops a model to explore the effects of zoning on the density of residential and nonresidential land use. Drawing on this model, density gradients that incorporate the effects of zoning are estimated for Greensboro, North Carolina. The model is used to simulate the effects of a change in restrictive-use residential zoning. The simulation shows that a 1 percent increase in the level of restrictive-use residential zoning across all neighborhoods in the city is associated with a 0.3 percent increase in gross population density and a 0.1 percent decline in net density (intensity). It suggests that restrictive-use zoning affects both the density and the intensity of residential land use through its effects on the value of residential land.     

Public service motivation and public sector employment preference: Comparing Italian and British students

ABSTRACT

Previous research has suggested that an individual’s public service motivation (PSM) is positively linked to a preference for public sector employment. The authors explore this link using a sample of British and Italian undergraduate students. They found a positive relationship between PSM and public sector job preferences among Italian students but not with the British students. The UK has implemented more NPM-style reforms than Italy and this could be impacting on public sector recruitment. Implications for recruitment and retention the public sector are discussed.     

Corporate employment,red flags,and audit effort

U.S. regulatory agencies and congressional oversight committees have expressed concerns that auditors often neglect red flags embedded in the operating characteristics of firms that misstate their financial reports. This study examines whether labor employment decisions, a major part of a firm’s operations, help predict accounting improprieties and consequently play a role in audit planning and pricing. We find that negative abnormal employment changes are associated with a higher likelihood of subsequent financial restatements, accounting irregularities, and lawsuits related to accounting fraud, and generally require greater effort from auditors as manifested by higher audit fees and longer audit report lags. Positive abnormal employment changes are associated with subsequent restatements and longer audit report lags, but not associated with fraud or audit fees. Taken together, the results are consistent with auditors recognizing the individual misstatement risks pertaining to companies’ employment decisions. These results suggest that standard setters, regulators, and practitioners should devote more attention to operational statistics to identify potential red flags.     

Quantifying the Risk of Deflation

We propose formal and quantitative measures of the risk that future inflation will be excessively high or low relative to the range preferred by a private sector agent. Unlike alternative measures of risk, our measures are designed to make explicit the dependence of risk measures on the private sector agent's preferences with respect to inflation. We illustrate our methodology by estimating the risks of deflation for the United States, Germany, and Japan for horizons of up to 2 years. The question of how large these risks are has been subject to considerable public debate. We find that, as of September 2002 when this question first arose, there was no evidence of substantial deflation risks for the United States and for Germany, contrary to some conjectures at the time. In contrast, there was evidence of substantial deflation risks in Japan.     

A Test of the Persistence in the Performance of UK Managed Funds

We employ a United Kingdom data set of weekly returns from a sample of investment trust companies available on the Datastream database. We analyse the relative performance of the funds and determine whether a 'good' (above-median), past-performance is indicative of future performance. Our study focuses on within sample relative performance. We examine persistence in performance in the short and long run based on a number of tests. Overall we find that both raw and risk-adjusted returns exhibit evidence of persistence in performance in the long run but not in the very short run.     

The Employment and Earnings Gaps between Natives and Immigrants in the UK between 1981 and 2006

We exploit the sizeable and long Lifetime Labour Market Database (LLMDB) to estimate the immigrant–native employment gap across gender, across continents of nationality and across lengths of stay in the UK between 1981 and 2006. These estimates are a novel contribution, as estimates for men and women are scarce in the literature and estimates across immigrants’ origins and lengths of stay are as yet unavailable. Furthermore, we estimate the employment gap as the differential in the number of employed weeks in the year between immigrants and natives, which has not been done before – this contrasts with the employment probability gap usually estimated in the literature. We also estimate the immigrant–native earnings gap across gender, across the entire earnings distribution, across continents of nationality and across lengths of stay. Estimates across the earnings distribution are also a novel contribution, as these are also as yet unavailable in the literature. Our main conclusion is that both the immigrant–native employment and earnings gaps vary across gender, continents of nationality and lengths of stay. Immigrant women earn more than native women throughout the distribution. The earnings gap is positive throughout for females: smaller at the bottom, larger at the top and relatively constant in the middle of the distribution. In contrast, it increases monotonically across the distribution for males: it is negative at the bottom and positive at the top. In the main, immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe suffer larger employment and earnings penalties, which are reduced as their length of stay increases. In contrast, immigrants from North America have a more favourable labour market experience.     

毕业生择业就业劳动权益法律保障

毕业生在择业就业过程中其合法的劳动权益经常受到侵害。在对毕业生择业、就业过程中劳动权益受侵害的现状进行分析的基础上,结合2008年实施的《劳动合同法》和《就业促进法》的相关内容提出,应该建立国家、学校与毕业生各负其责、相互配合的合谐的就业体系,以保障毕业生合法的劳动权益。     

英国养老金私有化改革的历程与评价

英国是较早进行养老金私有化改革的国家之一,开始于20世纪70年代末的"协议退出",导致保障水平下降、养老金收入差距拉大、基金管理费用高等问题日益显现,退出比例本身也呈下降趋势,人们越来越倾向于回到依靠国家养老金的老路上来.政府在新的改革中再次推行均等化,提高制度的再分配性.这一改革历程凸显反复、频繁、复杂,一方面给个人...     

Institute for the future's study of the UK, 1978–1995

The method used expert opinions (collected through interviews), scenario generation, and a simple econometric model. Some methodological innovations are reported; eg aids to assist experts in thinking ahead, and in how scenarios are generated and aggregated.