British Managers' Attitudes and Behaviour in Industrial Relations: A Twenty-Year Study

A unique longitudinal study of Britain's managers conducted in 1980, 1990 and 2000 permits comparisons of managerial attitudes and behaviour in industrial relations over twenty years. We find clear evidence of the relationship between macro‐level political and economic movements of the period from 1980 up until the late 1990s on managerial attitudes, the impact of changes in power relations and the ‘lag effect’ of institutions. The most unexpected findings are the modest rise of managerial unionism in the 1990s and the limited evidence of the replacement of collective bargaining by either individual or group involvement or by employee financial participation.     

LIFFE: a great british success story

Julian Roche, an independent futures market consultant, celebrates the success of the London International Financial Futures Exchange - London's newest market place which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.     

Commercialization of university research: A policy perspective

Academic research has been shown to have considerable commercial potential but there is a wide range of routes available for its exploitation.These routes vary in terms of the extent to which the gains from research are 'captured' by the academics, the parent institution or imitators. A model is developed to identify the most appropriate exploitation policies for dgerent fields of academic research.This model is then tested against a large sample of data from British universities and their academics.It is concluded that the alternative routes of spin-off enterprises, licensing, collaboration or consultancy depend on the nature o f the technology, the intellectual property protection available and the need for complementary assets to assist in their exploitation.     

‘Population pressure’ on the land: Analysis of trends past and future

At some point during development, total agricultural labour force (ALF) begins to decline even as total population is increasing. This paper explores the determinants of this decline. We find that income level and population growth rate explain much of the variation in ALF. Rate of income change does not seem to have an independent effect. Population density may or may not have an independent effect. If population growth is considered to be an intermediate variable, the overall effect of income alone is such that the elasticity of ALF with respect to income is of the order of ?0.27 to *minus;0.4.     

Resources,population, environment: An oversupply of false bad news

False bad news about population growth, natural resources, and the environment is published widely in the face of contradictory evidence. For example, the world supply of arable land has actually been increasing, the scarcity of natural resources including food and energy has been decreasing, and basic measures of U.S. environmental quality show positive trends. The aggregate data show no long-run negative effect of population growth upon the standard of living. Models that embody forces omitted in the past, especially the influence of population size upon productivity increase, suggest a long-run positive effect of additional people.     

Scientific and technical change in the USSR

The rapid development ot science and technology, a historical Soviet goal, would bring radical changes—for which the leadership may be unprepared. The complex programme, an ambitious forecast and plan for the period 1980–2000, is nearing completion. Its measures are designed to relieve a potential labour shortage, to ensure energy and resource supplies, to increase agricultural productivity, and to raise living standards. Success depends on major structural changes, which in turn require the adoption of more flexible organisation, the extension of planning horizons beyond the traditional five-year term, and the acceleration of technical innovation. There is considerable scope for international collaboration and the creative potential of the Soviet economy should not be underestimated.     

Phelps' technical progress model generalized

We generalize Phelps' technical progress function and make it more realistic, by weakening assumptions and by adding education and income as influences on technical progress. The result retains the simplicity of Phelps' result, and reinforces the heterodox conclusion that higher population growth implies faster economic growth and higher consumption.