The nature of credit rationing in the United Kingdom mortgage market

This paper addresses the problem of how to estimate market demand functions for finance in the presence of rationing within the context of the U.K. house mortgage market. Two distinct approaches are outlined. The first, and more traditional, focuses on American studies in which non-price terms are assumed to adjust so as, in combination with price, to produce market clearing. In contrast, the approach used in the present study conjectures that non-interest-rate terms are varied so as to discriminate among borrowers, satisfying some but leaving the market uncleared. Empirical tests, using U.K. data, offer some support for this alternative approach. The paper offers some thoughts on credit rationing, and outlines possible avenues for further research into this important and current topic.     

Labour market

The rapid improvement in the labour market has started to peter out. The latest Labour Force Survey data, for the three months to May, showed that the level of employment increased by just 16,000 on the quarter, compared to average increases of over 80,000 a quarter over the past year, while the unemployment rate was stable at 7.8%…     

Labour market

The labour market has kept improving at a steady pace over the last few months. The latest Labour Force Survey data, for the three months to August, show that the level of employment increased by 155,000 on the quarter, while the unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage points over the same period to 7.7%…     

Labour market

The labour market figures have remained strong. The ILO measure of unemployment has fallen below 7%, ending the first phase of forward guidance, while employment growth remains solid. Vacancies continue to rise and business surveys report rising demand for labour across all sectors…     

Labour market recruiting with intermediaries

We consider a Rothschild–Stiglitz–Spence labour market model and employ a centralised mechanism to coordinate the efficient matching of workers to firms. This mechanism can be thought of as operated by a recruitment agency, an employment office or head hunter. In a centralised descending-bid, multi-item procurement auction, workers submit wage-bids for each job and are assigned stable jobs as equilibrium outcome. We compare this outcome to independent, sequential hiring by firms and conclude that, in general, a stable assignment can only be implemented if firms coordinate to some extent.      

英国城市化进程的阶段性借鉴

人类已进入城市化的新阶段,全球70亿人口中超过半数生活在城市里.英国作为世界上率先实现城市化的国家,拥有250余年的城市化实践.英国城市走过了集群化、郊区化、逆城市化、城乡一体化的道路,英国城市化经历了自发蔓延、先放任后治理、法制管理、规划先行、城乡一体的进程,为包括中国在内的城市化高速发展的新兴国家,提供了研究城市化发展进程及其内在规律的启示.通过文献搜集、比较研究、案例分析等研究方法,总结英国城市化各阶段特征,详列英国应对“城市病”的具体举措,尤其是英国目前通过城市化缩小城乡差别,普及公共服务的经验,以资借鉴.     

Labour market segmentation and wage dynamics

The article contains results of a quantitative empirical investigation into the effects of labour market segmentation on wage dynamics in total industry as well as in several industrial branches in West Germany. By testing correlations between several indicators of earnings and the labour market it is shown that wage dynamics, in so far as they are determined by shop floor bargaining, can be explained at least as well and partly even better by indicators of certain partial labour markets than by conditions of the general labor market (i.e. the traditional Philipps approach).     

Labour flexibility and job market segmentation in Spain: a perspective from the labour demand side

The aim of this research is to conduct a quantitative analysis of the factors leading Spanish companies to adopt certain forms of organization that are typical of flexible businesses and high performance organizations. Despite the supposed inflexibility of the Spanish labour market, the results both point towards the high capacity of Spanish companies to select the form of work organization that best suits them and show the key role that competitive strategy plays when it comes to differentiating or segmenting types of work or workers, over and above the rigid working regulations that, purportedly, standardize labour relations in Spain.     

Monetary policy transparency in a forward-looking market: Evidence from the United States

Because unsatisfactory measures of the monetary policy transparency were used, the existing literature found mixed empirical results for the relationship between the monetary policy transparency and risk/volatility. This paper extends the literature by using a recently developed monetary transparency index [Kia’s (2011) index] which is dynamic and continuous. Furthermore, the existing literature ignores the fact that market participants can be forward looking and, therefore, not policy invariant. This study also finds that the agents in the market are not policy invariant and the more transparent the monetary policy is the less risky and volatile the money market will be.     

The impact of foreign variables on domestic money demand: Evidence from the United Kingdom

This paper contributes to the existing money demand literature by developing and estimating a shopping-time model in an open economy framework. Based on this microfoundations-of-money model, United Kingdom quarterly data for the period 1973:2–1997:2 are analyzed in the empirical study. After accounting for nonstationarity in the time series processes, I find three long-run relationships among the relevant variables. Estimation of the error-correction representation implied by the model shows that the foreign exchange rates and the imports consumption, in addition to the domestic variables, have significant effects on British demand for real money. I am grateful to Kenneth D. West, Donald D. Hester, James M. Johannes, Hung-Neng Lai, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the University of Alabama and the University of Wisconsin for helpful comments. I also thank the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for its financial support. Naturally, all remaining errors are mine.