Technical Efficiency under Alternative Regulatory Regimes: Evidence from the Inter-war British Gas Industry

From 1920 until nationalization, privately owned gas companies in Britain were regulated under one of three systems: the maximum price, the sliding scale, or the basic price system. In effect, the industry was the subject of a remarkable experiment in regulation. Hitherto, there has been no empirical analysis of the incentive properties of the regimes applied. This paper attempts such an investigation by using data envelopment analysis to estimate the relative efficiency of a sample of undertakings under each system. Undertakings operating under the basic price system are found to be more efficient which suggests that this form of regulation was most effective in the industry at this time.     

A Fourth Desideratum: The CES Cost Function and the Sustainable Configuration of Multiproduct Firms

For many parameter vectors, the sustainable configuration of an industry where multiproduct firms have CES cost functions fails to imply the existence of a multiplicity of multiproduct firms.     

Greening the airline pilot: HRM and the green performance of airlines in the UK

This paper investigates the potential for human resource management (HRM) to influence the green performance of airlines. The focus is on the management of airline pilots, in particular, who have unparalleled opportunities to affect green performance through their control of the machines that directly impact the industry's carbon footprint. As a result it is vital that the HR function finds ways to engage them in the greening of the organization and works to reduce the triggers to actions that have the potential to sabotage the green aims of the airline industry. To this end, the paper discusses first the indirect effects of HRM in terms of its influence on employee job satisfaction, commitment and involvement in the airline, which can reduce the propensity of pilots to engage in actions detrimental to the green performance of the airline. Second, it explores the nature and purpose of direct green HRM initiatives and airline pilot responses to these. It concludes that the role HR managers can play via their management of the employment relationship on the green performance of airlines in the UK is crucial but that they face considerable challenges.     

Britain's best kept secret? An analysis of the credit union as an alternative source of credit

At any time, the significance of a new device which facilitates saving and borrowing and encourages the prudent management of credit and debt is clear. Given the present credit market, in which certain categories of borrowers either cannot purchase credit or can only do so on disadvantageous terms, then the importance of such an alternative only increases. The credit union is such a device. It has an established and proven record of success in many countries but, outside of Northern Ireland, credit unions are in their infancy in the United Kingdom. This article examines the possibilities credit unions afford, against the background of the increasing problem of debt in the United Kingdom. We contend that credit unions can afford a partial solution to the debt problem, but that attention should also be placed on their limitations.     

Product Liability for Nanotechnology

The regulation of nanotechnology has been relatively well covered by policy-makers and academic commentators. Surprisingly, the potential impact of civil products liability has been less explored and yet, in an innovative industry sector, this should be of crucial concern to businesses and policy-makers generally. This paper explores this in the light of the EU Products Liability Directive. It explores the nature of risks and develops a new terminology to differentiate risks according to whether they are totally unexpected risks, potential but still unexpected risks, or suspected identified defects (either due to a characteristic of the product related to the defect or by analogy with another nanoproduct). The perhaps startling conclusion is that the more unknown a risk is the more likely a product containing it is to be found defective. However, the uncertainty surrounding this new area of science may give some leeway for the narrow development risks defence and that may have implications for the liability exposure of nanotechnology industries in those states that have chosen to exclude the development risks defence.     

Working out: aesthetic labour,affect and the fitness industry personal trainer

In this article, we identify the importance of aesthetic labour to the self-employed fitness industry personal trainer (PT), detailing the ways in which the PT trades on their own physical capital. We examine how these discussions relate to the aesthetic and material dimensions of body work (that is to say, enacted on and through bodies) and the ways in which affective labour, inherent to this type of service work, intersects or delimits physical capital and the embodied competencies of the PT. We argue that the work of PTs helps to deepen emerging discussions and provides a more nuanced and contextualised understanding of affective and aesthetic labour. We assert that the confluences and contradictions between the affective and aesthetic dimensions of work in a fitness industry setting demonstrate that excessive physical capital is perceived as negative for the professional identity of PTs. In conclusion, implications for further research and management are discussed.     

Never Give up on the Good Times: Student Attrition in the UK*

The determinants of students’ propensity to drop out of university are analysed using individual records of all students passing through the central applications process in 1993. The data set comprises about 100,000 individuals and allows a much more thorough analysis of student wastage than has been possible in the past. The main reasons for attrition, academic failure (‘involuntary’ attrition) and ‘voluntary’ dropout, are modelled. The results highlight, inter alia, the importance of matching and peer group effects, both of which have been found to be important determinants of student outcomes in the US but which have been subject to little empirical scrutiny for the UK.     

Tareas,ocupaciones y salarios en países de la OCDE

En este artículo se investigan los vínculos entre ingresos, capital humano y tareas laborales, utilizando información internacionalmente comparable del PIAAC (OCDE) sobre competencias de adultos. Tomando el marco teórico de Autor y Handel (2013), se amplía el análisis empírico a 21 países de la OCDE. Los datos permiten tener en cuenta tanto el nivel de instrucción como una medida de las competencias cognitivas. Los resultados confirman que las tareas que implica cada ocupación tienen influencia en las diferencias salariales tanto entre ocupaciones como dentro de cada una y proporcionan pruebas empíricas del poder de predicción del modelo para un gran número de países.