Regulatory coherence: blending trade and regulatory policy

Regulatory coherence has over the past four years become a term of art for domestic regulatory systems which interface seamlessly with the systems of other countries. And yet a precise or at least agreed definition remains elusive and descriptions often confuse ends and means. This article sets out to provide greater clarity, and in doing so illustrates that regulatory coherence can be thought of as both an ‘end’ (regulation that supports international trade and investment) and a ‘means’ (good regulatory practice). The adoption by countries of regulatory coherence objectives and practices increasingly blends trade and domestic regulatory policy

Riemannian geometries on spaces of plane curves

We study some Riemannian metrics on the space of regular smooth curves in the plane, viewed as the orbit space of maps from $S^1$ to the plane modulo the group of diffeomorphisms of $S^1$, acting as reparameterizations. In particular we investigate the metric for a constant $A> 0$: G^A_c(h,k) := \int_{S^1}(1+A\ka_c(\th)^2) |c'(\th)| d\th where \ka_c is the curvature of the curve $c$ and $h,k$ are normal vector fields to $c$. The term A\ka^2 is a sort of geometric Tikhonov regularization because, for A=0, the geodesic distance between any 2 distinct curves is 0, while for $A>0$ the distance is always positive. We give some lower bounds for the distance function, derive the geodesic equation and the sectional curvature, solve the geodesic equation with simple endpoints numerically, and pose some open questions. The space has an interesting split personality: among large smooth curves, all its sectional curvatures are $\ge 0$, while for curves with high curvature or perturbations of high frequency, the curvatures are $\le 0$.Comment: amslatex, 45 pagex, 8 figures, typos correcte

Vanishing geodesic distance on spaces of submanifolds and diffeomorphisms

The $L^2$-metric or Fubini-Study metric on the non-linear Grassmannian of all submanifolds of type $M$ in a Riemannian manifold $(N,g)$ induces geodesic distance 0. We discuss another metric which involves the mean curvature and shows that its geodesic distance is a good topological metric. The vanishing phenomenon for the geodesic distance holds also for all diffeomorphism groups for the $L^2$-metric.Comment: 26 pages, LATEX, final versio

The Gender Earnings Gap in Britain

The earnings gap between male and female employees is substantial and persistent. Using new data for Britain, this paper shows that an important contribution to this gap is made by the workplace in which the employee works. Evidence for workplace and occupational segregation as partial explanations of the earnings gap is presented. Having allowed also for individual worker characteristics there remains a substantial within-workplace and within-occupation gender earnings gap. The contribution of these factors, as well as the earnings gap itself, differ significantly across sectors of the labour market. The relative unimportance of occupational segregation and the large remaining gender earnings gap suggest that stronger enforcement of Equal Pay legislation is likely to be the most appropriate policy response.Gender earnings; wage-gap; fixed-effects; segregation

Job Tenure in Australia and Britain: Individual Versus Workplace effects

We explore determinants of job reallocation and the implications for employment change and average job tenure in this paper. A model which associates technological advances with the process of economic growth is modified and analysed. Data on average job tenure within workplaces and gross job flows across workplaces in Australia are constructed by us from a single panel of workplace data and examined. Substantial simultaneous job creation and destruction are found in a year of strong job growth, suggesting that workplace heterogeneity is an important feature of the Australian labour market. The predictions generated from the theoretical model are examined with the data for job flows and average job tenure. Our results support the key features of the model.labour market flows; job reallocation; creative-destruction; average-tenure

Men, Women and the Hiring Function

This paper examines the idea of ranking of groups and genders in terms of hiring probabilities. By incorporating a range of complementary data sources, measures of the three possible gross worker flows into employment, and the stocks of job seekers from which they come, are provided for both genders in the Australian labour market. We find a clear ranking of men over women in the hiring process. Indeed, in aggregate women appear to be effectively segregated from the male hiring market, whereas this is not true with males in the female hiring market. We also find that amongst males, employed job seekers are ranked above those unemployed and, in turn, above those not in the labour force. For women, the unemployed and employed are not found to be competing with each other, whilst those not in the labour force are ranked below the unemployed. We believe that this is the first study explicitly investigating these three major gross worker flows for women as well as men, enabling us to further explore the interdependent processes in the labour market by considering more fully the interactions across job seekers of different genders and from different labour market states.