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.     

Fertility,Taxation and Family Policy*

Historically, there is clear evidence of an inverse relationship between female labour supply and fertility. However, the relationship across countries is now positive. Countries like Germany and Italy, with the lowest fertility, also have the lowest female participation rates. This paper analyses the extent to which this can be explained by public policy, in particular taxation and the system of child support. The results suggest that countries which have individual rather than joint taxation, and which support families through child care facilities rather than child payments, are likely to have both higher female labour supply and higher fertility.     

Road infrastructure and economic development in the periphery: the case of A55 improvements in North Wales

This paper examines the impact of a major road improvement programme on the economic development of North Wales. The paper identifies the economic impacts of the road on a selection of firms and organisations in North Wales, and provides a modelling framework to examine the static and dynamic effects of road improvements. Road improvements across North Wales are found to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for economic development in this peripheral area.     

The valuation consequences of voluntary accounting changes

Firm management typically claims that voluntary accounting method changes (VACs) are made to enhance the informativeness of earnings by better matching accounting practices with economic reality. In contrast, skeptics argue that managers adopt new accounting procedures to opportunistically manage earnings and influence their firm’s stock price. In this paper, we investigate these alternative motives for VACs. Specifically, we investigate whether VACs cause equity prices to deviate from their fundamental values in the short-term by studying the long-run stock-price performance for a sample of firms that voluntarily change accounting methods. In addition, we investigate changes in earnings informativeness by examining the behavior of earning response coefficients and the relationship between earnings and future cash flows in years surrounding the VAC event. In contrast to prior research, we find little evidence that a strategy based solely on the earnings effect of a VAC can generate abnormal returns. While we find weak evidence of post-VAC abnormal returns for extreme VACs, this result appears to be driven by the accruals anomaly documented in Sloan [Sloan, R. G. (1996). The Accounting Review, 71, 289–315]. Our evidence further suggests that earnings informativeness is not significantly altered by voluntary changes in accounting methods. Taken together, our evidence suggests the market recognizes the financial statement effects of alternative acceptable accounting methods and efficiently processes the valuation implications of VACs.