Search results

This paper aims to investigate whether the conventional approach to estimating the private and social rates of return to education generates reliable findings when used in economies with chronically depressed labour markets.

Conventional techniques (the Mincer earnings function and the discounting method) are used to provide initial estimates of the private and social returns to education in Kosovo. However, this study argues that in countries with chronically depressed labour markets, such as in Kosovo, the conventional approach is likely to significantly underestimate the private and social returns from achieving a higher level of educational attainment. This study extends the estimation approach to take into account the greater probability of more highly educated Kosovars being: employed, employed in the formal and public sectors and having longer job tenure.

The extended approach to estimating rates of return to schooling generates higher private and social rates of return to education than the conventional approach. Moreover, in contrast to the findings of the conventional approach, the revised approach suggests that private and social rates of return are highest from completion of upper secondary and tertiary education.

The results indicate that if governments in economies with chronically depressed labour markets decide upon their educational priorities based on unadjusted rates of return, then resources may be misallocated.

The analysis presented in this paper suggests that conventional approaches to estimating private and social rates of return to education are not suitable for use in economies with chronically depressed labour markets. In addition, the paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of the rates of return to education in Kosovo. These results are used to provide a critique of the Kosovo Government’s recent educational priorities.

In recent years Adrian Ziderman has applied the tools of cost‐benefit analysis to the evaluation of government training and his latest paper analyses the regional location of Government Training Centres (GTCs). Although he is kind enough to suggest that his paper was stimulated by an earlier paper of my own, he has nevertheless been severe in his criticism of me. He claims that I eschew the cost‐benefit approach because I find it wanting. Furthermore, he argues that the alternative criteria that I suggest for evaluating the regional location of GTC capacity are seriously deficient and give rise to policy recommendations which must be “treated with caution”. Here I attempt to meet Ziderman's criticisms of my earlier paper and in passing I comment very briefly upon the paper by Nicholas Adnett which is also critical of the main policy implications of my analysis.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

The post‐war period has been one of unparallelled growth and stability in most western economies. One consequence of this performance has been increasing governmental concern with the dual problems of structural unemployment and skilled labour shortages. The concensus that both of these problems can be left to the workings of the market system has gradually been superseded by direct and indirect government involvement in the training and re‐training of the work force. Moreover, until recently this direct involvement in the United Kingdom appeared to be of small quantitative importance. The number completing government training schemes in 1971 was only 18,402. Recent plans suggest a target of 100,000 as soon as possible. A further indication of the expansion of government sponsored vocational training can be gauged from the expansion of the annual output of the Government Training Centres (now called Skillcentres) from 3,336 trained in 1962 to 12,623 in 1971 with a projected 30,000 output by 1978.

The levels of unemployment experienced in the last decade have served to concentrate attention on the operation of the labour market. A major concern of recent assessments of the British labour market has been the apparent persistence of labour shortages, particularly skill shortages. An additional concern has been the need to improve labour market information, particularly at the local labour market level. This article seeks to assess the appropriateness of this emphasis by analysing the meaning and performance of the various measures of pressure of demand available for local labour markets at the occupational level. The conclusion of the analysis is that all the commonly used indicators of the pressure of demand have severe theoretical and practical weaknesses and that extreme care needs to be taken in the use of published labour market data. Furthermore, knowledge is needed concerning the interrelationships between the documented and non‐documented labour markets.

The last two decades have been characterised by a rise in income and wage inequality in a wide range of countries, including European transition countries. The rise in globalisation is one major factor explaining this increasing wage inequality. International trade and FDI have increased significantly since the beginning of transition and the purpose of this paper is to focus on whether FDI plays an important role in explaining the pattern of wage inequality in selected transition countries.

A cross-country empirical investigation has been conducted using two alternative measures of wage inequality: the Gini coefficient and the Theil index. Several model specifications and estimation strategies have been employed to obtain consistent estimates and to check for the robustness of the results.

The results indicate that a rising share of inward FDI in gross domestic product (GDP) increased wage inequality in transition economies, though its overall effect was relatively small. Considering the long run, there is no clear evidence of a concave relationship between FDI and wage inequality, which may be a consequence of the relatively low levels of FDI in many transition countries.

Inwards FDI has made a small contribution to increasing wage inequality in European transition economies. However, its overall beneficial effects on labour markets in these countries suggest that rather than restricting FDI governments should target increasing the supply of skilled labour.

This new empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that an increased inward FDI stock as a share of GDP increases wage inequality in transition economies, however, this relationship is a complex one. Differences in average wages, wage differentials, employment shares of skilled workers and relative size of the foreign-owned sector are all likely to be important for the behaviour of wage inequality.

In recent years there has been an expansion of research into the operation of the UK labour market. Under the pressure of economic conditions and in light of theoretical developments much of this research has concentrated on the behaviour of unemployed workers, and in particular their job search. In contrast, little research has been conducted into search by employed workers. In part this reflects the paucity of available data but also the limitations of early search‐based models of labour market behaviour. In this study the development of on‐the‐job search models (hereafter OJS) is examined and an empirical investigation reported, using data collected by local offices of the Employment Services Division (hereafter ESD) of the Manpower Services Commission.

Since the war there has been increased government intervention in the operation of the economy. Its objectives have been those of promoting growth, full employment, price stability and a favourable balance of trade. The belief that a major reason for the failure of the economy to achieve these objectives was manpower constraints, led to governments intervening into labour markets. One feature of this movement has been the particular concern with the supply of skilled workers. This concern stemmed from the belief that the skilled labour market was characterised by persistent shortages and large cyclical fluctuations in the training of skilled workers.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This monograph presents the results of a two‐year study (1975–77) of the impact of British Government vocational training (GVT) measures in the North Humberside local labour market. This section briefly outlines the general training policy background within which the local provision has operated and outlines the structure of this monograph.