Gender, motivation, experience and wages

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991-97 this paper investigates the structure of the female wage equation and the gender wage differential. The discriminatory portion of the gender wage differential is overstated by over 40% when inadequate measures of female labour market experience are included in the wage equation. The degree of labour market motivation, aspirations and constraints are found to have a significant impact on the female wage. Moreover, the impact of time out of the labour market varies across gender, activity undertaken while out, labour market motivation and the degree of male occupational domination

The Relative Importance of Local Labour Market Conditions and Pupil Attainment on Post-Compulsory Schooling Decisions

This paper assesses the relative importance of local labour market conditions and pupil educational attainment as primary determinants of the post-compulsory schooling decision. Using a nested logit model we formally incorporate the structured and sequential decision process pupils engage with. Our findings show that, on average, the key drivers of the schooling decision are pupil educational attainment and parental aspirations rather than local labour market conditions. However, there is some evidence that higher local unemployment rates encourage males to invest in education, and that interactions with educational attainment suggest local labour market conditions impact heterogeneously across the pupil population.post-compulsory education, local labour markets, parental aspirations, educational attainment, nested logit

Educational Attainment, Labour Market Institutions, and the Structure of Production

A key feature of OECD economic growth since the early 1970s has been the secular decline in manufacturing's share of GDP and the secular rise of service sectors. This paper examines the role played by relative prices, technology, factor endowments, and labour market institutions in the process of "de- industrialization." We find a statistically significant and quantitatively important effect of levels of educational attainment. Furthermore, the production structure responds differently to the educational attainment of men and women. Finally, countries with stronger levels of employment protection are shown to adjust more slowly to changes in prices, technology, and factor endowments.De-industrialization, Educational Attainment, Factor Endowments, Labour Market Institutions,Specialization

The other margin : do minimum wages cause working hours adjustments for low-wage workers?

This paper estimates the impact of the introduction of the UK minimum wage on the working hours of low-wage employees using difference-in-differences estimators. The estimates using the employer-based New Earnings Surveys indicate that the introduction of the minimum wage reduced the basic hours of low-wage workers by between 1 and 2 hours per week. The effects on total paid hours are similar (indicating negligible effects on paid overtime) and lagged effects dominate the smaller and less significant initial effects within this. Estimates using the employee-based Labour Force Surveys are typically less significant.minimum wages ; working hours ; labour demand ; difference-in-differences estimator

Thermal performance of high voltage power cables

The UK high voltage electricity transmission network continues to face annual rises in demand, with ever greater volumes of power supplied to load centres throughout the country. To operate this network effectively, it is vital to accurately calculate the maximum allowable electric current which can be safely carried by each component in the power system. In high voltage power cables, this limit is defined by the maximum operating temperature of the cable insulation. Specify this current rating to be too low and the cable asset will never be used to its full potential; conversely setting the rating to be too high risks damage to the asset as the excessive heating can cause premature failure. Thus the rating calculation must be optimised to maintain security of supply by minimising the risk of cable failure, while also maximising the returns from capital investment on the power network. This project has employed a variety of mathematical techniques to improve the methods by which current ratings are calculated. Modern computational techniques such as finite element analysis (e.g Figure 1) and computational fluid dynamics are used to create more advanced circuit rating techniques. These have been compared and refined with input gained from field data. By eliminating simplifications from existing methods, it has been possible to identify ways of increasing the utilisation of the existing network. In addition the new techniques allow examination of the potential benefits of future developments in cable technology. Benefits are being derived from this work on both a day to day and strategic planning levels. For instance, by re-evaluating the current rating method for cables installed in tunnels, it has proved possible to consider the benefits from co-locating more cables in one tunnel to best use these expensive assets. The application of this method has allowed the quantification of the benefits which might be available from next generation cable technologies, enabling the prioritisation of future research effort in cable materials. Upon completion, the knowledge gained from this work is to be used to revise the international standard on calculating current ratings in cable tunnels. Techniques such as these underpin the concept of smart grids with improved operational flexibility and capability. Simultaneously the requirement to build expensive new components into the network is limited, whilst still meeting the need to supply ever increasing volumes of power across the country

Ergot usage and contamination of foodstuffs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its possible implication in the population changes in England

The English population question in the long eighteenth century is explored and investigated further by using the results from the demography available from the 30 year study by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, together with an understanding of the impact of ergot contamination of diet on female fertility.The hypothesis presented is that the staple rye diet at the end of the seventeenth century was contaminated with ergot which acted as a contraceptive and abortive agent and in addition could have had an influence on both the survival of women and children if given accidentally or deliberately during labour. Within this thesis it is argued that when the ingestion of ergot on rye was reduced within the diet from around the third decade of eighteenth century onwards this would have removed or released these fertility constraints and therefore it would have allowed women to become more fertile, while improved midwifery practice curtailed the negative effects of ergot ingestion during childbirth. These findings and their timing closely parallel the demographic changes reported by the Cambridge Research Group. Sufficient accumulated circumstantial evidence was found to support the hypothesis to suggest that ergot could have been a factor in both the fertility changes during the long eighteenth century and the perinatal mortality rate. The conclusions of this thesis need to be taken forward in additional local parish research by others to further substantiate these findings

Environmental Harshness and its Effect on Appetite and the Desire for Conspicuous Signalling Products

There is often an assumption that there is a right and a wrong way for consumers to behave. For example, with regard to eating, people should make food choices based on maximizing vitamins and minerals and not consuming more calories than one expends in a day. Likewise, it is assumed that buying products to conspicuously signal a message to another is wasteful and maladaptive. The research in this thesis challenges these assumptions and argues that these behaviours can be both adaptive and maladaptive depending on one’s environmental conditions. In this thesis, I describe three experiments that examine how perception of environmental harshness affects appetite for different types of foods. The data shows that food desirability in adulthood varies depending on early childhood socio-economic status, the type of environmental stressor (harsh social, harsh economic and harsh physical safety) and the intensity of the stressors within each of these environments. It was also found that different types of environmental harshness differentially affects food desire based on energy density and food category type. In addition to the experiments on harshness and food desirability, I have examined how environmental harshness affects desire for products that are used to conspicuously signal information to others. For example, under conditions of environmental stress, products may be used to advertise that a male possesses financial or physical power which is desirable to a potential mate. Likewise, a women may buy products to display she possess financial power or she may purchase products that augment her beauty and sexual attractiveness. These studies reveal that product desire is also affected by different types of environmental harshness and the intensity of the stress generated by these environmental conditions. Through the research described in this thesis, we gain a more comprehensive understanding of the proximate variables that influence two subsets of consumer behaviour, namely food desire and product signalling, and how these behaviours may have been selected for due to their adaptive value

The induction of premature labour : with especial relation to past and present continental views of the questions involved

The questions relative to the Induction of Premature Labour resolve themselves into three broad issues: the general justification of the act, the individual indications for it, and the methods advisable in its performance.I cannot pretend to estimate the value of British contributions to my subject; having for one thing had access to few English works during the past. ten months. But little doubt exists that the German and French schools have provided an endless material both in theory and practice for the consideration of the questions involved; and although specialisation may sometimes prevent their workers from comprehending the issues as a whole, such limitations do not diminish one's admiration and are even justified by the still unsettled condition of the individual factors concerned.Even if, in view of the facts I have tried to illustrate, we cannot say with Professor Pinard: "L'Embryotomie de l'enfant vivant a vécu "; we may still regard the new century as capable of interpreting its ever - increasing mass of data, and of rendering therefrom wise rules for the Induction of Premature Labour; such as may best subserve the physician's ideal,- the genius to recognise an emergency at the right moment and in the right manner