Has the youth labour market deteriorated in recent decades? Evidence from developed countries

There is nowadays a widespread sense that things have gone badly wrong for young workers in advanced economies, and that the difficulty is caused by a fall in their appeal to employers. It is tempting to attribute the problem to a trend in labour demand that favours older, more experienced workers over younger, less experienced ones. The same line of interpretation has been widely favoured for the other major dimension of employee skill: educational attainment. The contemporary fall in the pay of less educated workers, as compared to more educated ones, in the US and the UK in particular, has been widely attributed to the spread of information technology and globalisation, both of which are taken to raise the productivity of more educated workers relative to less educated ones. An influential account of developments in the US claims that ‘relative demand shifts favouring more skilled workers are … essential to understanding longer-run changes in the US wage structure’ (Katz and Autor 1999: 1513). The same factors might had similar effects in the experience dimension of skill, thereby impairing labour market prospects for young workers. The validity of these propositions has however been contested. Doubts have been raised concerning the existence of skill-bias in technical change (Card and DiNardo 2002). Some commentaries deny the existence of an underlying trend unfavourable to youth (OECD 2002: 20-29). This paper investigates the evidence concerning trends in youth relative pay and employment in developed economies since the mid-1970s, focusing on structural change on the demand-side of the labour market. It improves on previous research by including more countries, and by controlling for macroeconomic fluctuations, which affect youth employment particularly keenly. It then considers the growth of educational participation, as a further, supply-side, influence that complicates the interpretation of changes in youth outcomes.young workers; labour market

Implications of hydrodynamic fluctuations on the minimum shear viscosity of the dilute Fermi gas at unitarity

We confirm and expand on work by Chafin and Schaefer on hydrodynamic fluctuations in the unitary Fermi gas. Using the result for the equation of state from a recent MIT experiment, we derive lower bounds for \eta/n and \eta/s as a function of temperature. Re-analyzing recent quantum Monte Carlo data for the shear-viscosity spectral function we point out a possible resolution for the tension between the viscosity bound \eta/n> 0.3 from Chafin and Schaefer and the quantum Monte Carlo results \eta/n<0.2$ from Wlazlowski et al. near the critical temperatureComment: 14 pages plus appendices; v2: major revisions including new introductory material on classical versus fluctuating hydrodynamic

Large employers and apprenticeship training in Britain

We consider two aspects of the link between apprenticeship and large employers in Britain: the contributions of apprenticeship to employers supplies of intermediate skills and of employers to the Advanced Apprenticeship programme. Evidence is taken from interviews with managers in twenty-nine organisations. We find that apprenticeship does function outside Advanced Apprenticeship, primarily because of trainee ineligibility. Employers use of apprenticeship depends on its cost-effectiveness relative to recruitment and upgrade training within HRM practice. Some employers value apprenticeship as a source of long-term employment and career progression. The intensity of training depends on ownership attributes, with family firms operating larger programmes. Employers participate in Advanced Apprenticeship, in terms of contractual role and programme delivery, in diverse ways. The implications of their choices for training quality are not unambiguous. -- In dem Papier werden zwei Aspekte zum Zusammenhang von betrieblichen Ausbildungen und Großunternehmen in Großbritannien analysiert: Einmal der Beitrag betrieblicher Erstausbildungen zur Bereitstellung von Facharbeiter-Qualifikationen und zum anderen der Beitrag der Arbeitgeber für das Programm Advanced Apprenticeship. Die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse stützen sich auf Interviews mit Managern in 29 Organisationen. Es wurde deutlich, dass betriebliche Ausbildungen außerhalb des Advanced Apprenticeship-Programms funktionieren, vor allem wegen Nichtzulassung zu dem Advanced Apprenticeship Programm auf Grund fehlender Erfüllung der Zulassungskriterien. Der Umfang, in dem Arbeitgeber die Möglichkeiten betrieblicher Erstausbildungen nutzen, hängt ab von dem Vergleich der Ausbildungskosten zu den Kosten von Neueinstellungen und von betrieblichen Weiterbildungen im Rahmen betrieblicher Personalentwicklungsmaßnahmen. Einige Arbeitgeber schätzen betriebliche Erstausbildungen vor allem insofern, als sie förderlich sind für eine lange Betriebszugehörigkeit und eine positive berufliche Entwicklung. Es gibt einen Zusammenhang von Ausbildungsqualität und Eigentumsstruktur: familiengeführte Unternehmen bieten umfangreichere Ausbildungsprogramme an. Unternehmen nehmen in unterschiedlicher Weise an dem Advanced Apprenticeship- Programm teil, bezogen auf ihre vertraglich vereinbarte Rolle und der Art ihres Angebots. Die Auswirkungen und Folgen ihrer Entscheidungen hinsichtlich der Qualität der von ihnen angebotenen Ausbildung sind nicht eindeutig.

Four Lenses for Designing Morally Engaging Games

Historically the focus of moral decision-making in games has been narrow, mostly confined to challenges of moral judgement (deciding right and wrong). In this paper, we look to moral psychology to get a broader view of the skills involved in ethical behaviour and how they may be employed in games. Following the Four Component Model of Rest and colleagues, we identify four “lenses” – perspectives for considering moral gameplay in terms of focus, sensitivity, judgement and action – and describe the design problems raised by each. To conclude, we analyse two recent games, The Walking Dead and Papers, Please, and show how the lenses give us insight into important design differences between them

Playing Around With Morality: Introducing the Special Issue on “Morality Play”

This special issue of Games and Culture focuses on the intersection between video games and ethics. This introduction briefly sets out the key research questions in the research field and identifies trends in the articles included in this special issu

Design Challenges for GDPR RegTech

The Accountability Principle of the GDPR requires that an organisation can demonstrate compliance with the regulations. A survey of GDPR compliance software solutions shows significant gaps in their ability to demonstrate compliance. In contrast, RegTech has recently brought great success to financial compliance, resulting in reduced risk, cost saving and enhanced financial regulatory compliance. It is shown that many GDPR solutions lack interoperability features such as standard APIs, meta-data or reports and they are not supported by published methodologies or evidence to support their validity or even utility. A proof of concept prototype was explored using a regulator based self-assessment checklist to establish if RegTech best practice could improve the demonstration of GDPR compliance. The application of a RegTech approach provides opportunities for demonstrable and validated GDPR compliance, notwithstanding the risk reductions and cost savings that RegTech can deliver. This paper demonstrates a RegTech approach to GDPR compliance can facilitate an organisation meeting its accountability obligations

Estimating Common Principal Components in High Dimensions

We consider the problem of minimizing an objective function that depends on an orthonormal matrix. This situation is encountered when looking for common principal components, for example, and the Flury method is a popular approach. However, the Flury method is not effective for higher dimensional problems. We obtain several simple majorization-minizmation (MM) algorithms that provide solutions to this problem and are effective in higher dimensions. We then use simulated data to compare them with other approaches in terms of convergence and computational time