Transient Jobs and Lifetime Jobs: Dualism in the British Labour Market

How long does a job last in Britain? We find that many workers have very short jobs and many have very long jobs. We estimate that in 1990, 40 percent of men were in jobs that will last 20 years or more. On the other hand, 24 percent were in jobs lasting less than five years. We conclude that the labour market is still capable of offering ‘lifetime jobs’ to many workers. Policy analysis of issues such as reform of the welfare state, pensions, and training should take note that reports of the death of ‘jobs for life’ appear to be exaggerated.     

Economic Sanctions and Foreign Policy

ECONOMIC SANCTIONS IN SUPPORT OF FOREIGN POLICY GOALS, by Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey J. Schott, assisted by Kimberly Ann Elliott ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, by Robin Renwick ECONOMIC SANCTIONS: IDEALS AND EXPERIENCE, by M.S. Daoudi and M.S. Dajani     

Strategic and HRM aspects of kaizen: a case study

This article presents a case study of a kaizen in a UK diesel engine manufacturer. Kaizen is explained as an emergent strategy; its effective-ness in reducing costs is explained by its effects on the effort bargain and by the organisation of the work standardisation task. Kaizen–related changes, perceptions of the employees, and its effects of the competitive position of the firm are reviewed.     

INCOME ELASTICITIES OF DEMANDS FOR FOODS IN GREAT BRITAIN

This paper describes analysis of data from the National Food Survey to determine the influences of household income and composition on household demand for foods in 1974, 1979, 1980 and 1982. The paper focuses on fats, cheese and carcase meats. The analysis uses household level data, regarding zero expenditures as arising because of infrequent purchasing and the expenditure-income relationship used in the Almost Ideal Demand Model. This is in contrast with the analysis reported by the National Food Survey Committee which uses a constant elasticity model and averaged income and expenditure data.     

The Demand for Private Medical Insurance in the UK: A Cohort Analysis

This paper examines the determinants of the demand for private health insurance in the United Kingdom from 1978 to 1996 using a pseudo-cohort panel. The focus is on the impact of public and private sector quality, generational change, and past purchase on demand. The results indicate that there has been generational change in buying behaviour, that the number of senior doctors employed in the public sector impacts upon demand for the private alternative, and that there is limited impact of habit in purchase. Changes to the structure of labour contracts in the NHS may affect demand for the private alternative.     

Decomposing the bias in time-series estimates of CAPM betas

We identify two sources of bias arising from time-series regression used to compute beta. This bias arises due to the classical error in variables problem and a ‘mechanical interaction’ which exists when the index comprises the asset of interest. Assuming that the market is proxied by a fixed-weight index, we demonstrate that the relative weighting of an asset within the index, and/or the magnitude of its idiosyncratic risk, directly biases the beta estimate for the individual stock and also for all stocks within the index. Via simulations, we show that the problem is most pronounced for markets with a small number of highly concentrated assets. Finally, we propose a procedure to reduce this bias and apply the methods to equity data.     

A Disaggregate Analysis of the Evolution of Job Tenure in Britain, 1975–1993

We use data on 200,000 individuals to investigate changes in job tenure. We look at the age–tenure profile for different birth cohorts of workers and find little change for men and an improvement for women. We estimate probability models for two cuts of the tenure distribution. We find that, controlling for a set of age, demographic, educational, industrial and occupational characteristics, the proportion of workers in short jobs and longer jobs has the same path as in the aggregate (unconditional) analysis. Allowing for the effect of all these characteristics to vary with time uncovers no evidence of secular change.     

A French model of craft training: its strategic relevance and recruitment issues for a UK firm

This paper is a study of the recruitment to the first version of the International Journeyman Programme (IJP), a project to recruit and train young workers from the north-east of England for a craft and technician training programme in engineering organized by a French trade guild, Les Compagnons du Devoir (CdD). The initial version of the project was unsuccessful and the paper highlights the role played by UK state agencies and institutions in the recruitment process in the project's lack of success. The paper examines the strategic relevance of a model of French craft training to a UK firm, describes that system of training and development, and analyses the recruitment difficulties faced by the IJP organizers when they attempted to launch the programme. The study finds that key elements of the UK VET system have severe problems in delivering high-skills training, and that there are in-built structural barriers that limit the extent to which such training can be easily imported.     

Does biotechnology have a role in the promotion of underutilised crops?

Rapidly developing biotechnology applications aimed at improving major crops receive large investments and could, in theory, play a role in the promotion of underutilised plant species in the tropics and subtropics, in order to address current and emerging challenges for agriculture. The application of such methods is, however, sometimes controversial, and the frequently considerable costs involved must be weighed against the limited resources available to develop underutilised species, as well as against the many alternative methods available for promotion. Through database searches, we take an evidence-based approach to assess whether there are clear examples where biotechnology has been used practically to enhance the cultivation of underutilised plants at a field level. We conclude that tissue culture and micropropagation techniques have proven useful, but for other applications benefits are generally unclear at present, although ongoing work suggests genomic and genetic modification approaches may in future be significant for a subset of underutilised species. Successful outcomes, however, appear to be limited by a lack of integrated thinking during the use of biotechnology methods. We review the particular limitations and risks associated with applying biotechnology to underutilised crops, including the negative consequences of technology centralisation. In addition, the specific actions needed to ensure that smallholder farmers in low-income countries better benefit during the use of biotechnology on underutilised species, by placing a stronger emphasis on partnerships and by proper monitoring of benefits along value chains, are described.