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John Shropshire used to farm celery just in Poland. Why? Because celery production is labour intensive and Poland had abundant available labour. However, he now also farms in the Fens, Cambridgeshire. Why? Because the EU Single Market gives him access to the labour he needs. Not cheap labour – John pays the living wage to his workers – but available seasonal migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe – 2500 of them.The strawberries enjoyed at Wimbledon are picked by similar labour, so are the hops in our British brewed beer.

The post Brexit, business, and the role of migration for an ageing UK appeared first on OUPblog.

MPC recruitment manager claims, "Getting to say you make THE BEST movies gets you friends with benefits."

The post MPC Tries The Ultimate Recruitment Strategy: VFX Will Get You Laid appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

If you’ve been following the Brexit debate in the media, you no doubt will have noticed how European employment laws are frequently bandied around as the sort of laws that Britain could do without, thank you very much. As welcome as a giant cheesecake at the Weight Watchers Annual Convention, the European Working Time Directive is never far away from the lips of Brexiters.

The post Brexit and employment law: a bonfire of red tape? appeared first on OUPblog.

Making its way through parliament at present is the Trade Union Bill 2016, which at the time of writing is at the report stage of the House of Lords. The Bill has been the subject of much debate, both in parliament and the press. This article will consider the likely impact of its main strike provisions, should they come into force.

The post The Trade Union Bill 2016 and its likely effect on strike action appeared first on OUPblog.

Guy and Doll have agreed that Guy will act as Doll directs, and that Doll is entitled to use force or punishment to get Guy to do as she directs if he ever demurs or falls short. Guy has contracted to be Doll’s slave. Such contracts are familiar from fiction and from history; and some people may have familiarity with them in contemporary life. It is common for philosophers to argue that such contracts are impossible.

The post Slavery contracts appeared first on OUPblog.

In the 1990s Australia began reforming its employment assistance system. Referred to as welfare-to-work, at the close of last century Australia had a publically owned, publically delivered system. By 2003, that system had been fully privatised and all jobseekers received their assistance via a private agency, working under government contract. To this day, Australia is the only country with a fully privatise quasi-market in employment services.

The post Getting (Active) Welfare to Work in Australia and around the World appeared first on OUPblog.

Change is constant. We are all affected by the changing weather, natural disasters, and the march of time. Changes caused by human activity—inventions, migrations, wars, government policies, new markets, and new values—affect organizations as well as individuals.

The post Leadership for change appeared first on OUPblog.

In 2004, I was waiting on a tube platform and spotted posters asking: ‘Police – could you?’. I thought about that a lot and realised that, at that point in time, I couldn’t. I didn’t feel certain enough that, in difficult situations, I would have good enough judgement always to do the right thing. Fast forward ten years and I’d done a fair bit of growing up. I’d worked in a police force and spent a lot of time with officers – both regulars and Specials.

The post My life as a ‘career Special’ appeared first on OUPblog.

Leadership training has become a multi-billion dollar global industry. The reason for this growth is that organizations, faced with new technology, changing markets, fierce competition, and diverse employees, must adapt and innovate or go under. Because of this, organizations need leaders with vision and the ability to engage willing collaborators. However, according to interviews with business executives reported in the McKinsey Quarterly, leadership programs are not developing global leaders.

The post Can leadership be taught? appeared first on OUPblog.

Complaints about "boomerang kids" or the lack of work ethic for younger generations isn't uncommon. Yet over 80% of high school seniors have held at least one part-time job. And balancing schoolwork with a dead-end job is essential, as career prospects dissolve for young adults without an education.

The post Employment and education for emerging adults appeared first on OUPblog.

Wrapping up 2014, the EU year of Workplace Reinvention, once again brings worklife balance (WLB) policies into focus. These policies, including parental leave, rights to reduced hours, and flexible work hours, are now part of European law and national laws inside and outside of Europe. For example, Japan has similar WLB policies in place.

The existence of these rights does not always, however, reflect the capabilities of individuals to claim them without risk to their careers, and even job loss, particularly when so many companies are downsizing. There is a gap between policies and practices, and, more broadly, a widening gap between aspirations for worklife balance—for more time for family, friends, and leisure activities—and the pressures for greater productivity and increased work intensity, alongside the growing numbers of insecure and precarious jobs. For men, this gap has become more tangible due to changing norms and expectations for them to be more involved fathers and the persistence of gendered norms around caring and earning in the workplace. Research, including the European Social Survey 2010, reveals that when looking for a job the overwhelming majority of men (as well as women), place a high priority on reconciling employment with family. They also show that majority of working fathers would choose to work less hours even if it meant a corresponding loss in hourly pay. Still, between 40-60% of them in European countries are working more than 40 hours a week (European Social Survey in 2010).

Firm and work organizational culture has become the central focus in worklife balance research, with a particular focus on increasing flexibility (flexi-times and flex workplaces) and telecommuting. Flexible working times, once a perk for the valuable worker, have been embraced by many firms as the hallmark of new management and work organization. It is a cornerstone in EU policy and discourse on WLB. In June, the UK granted all employees the right to request flex time. Flexibility is presented as the win-win situation for achieving WLB, allowing for changes over the life course as well as individual preferences.

But does flexibility actually increase one’s scope of alternatives and choice in worklife balance? This depends on the job/sector, the skill and education of the worker; gender matters, as do national statutory provisions and the practices at firms. Consider the following example. Flexibility in working times and especially the possibility to reduce hours has enabled many mothers to combine employment with family, but there are career penalties since part-time jobs tend to be considered “dead end jobs”. Can one adjust working times over the life course? The European Survey on Working Times (firm level data) show that only 18% of firms offer full reversibility (the possibility to move from part-time to full-time and from full-time to part-time).

Within the current debates on worklife balance and flexibility we see two cross-currents. On the one side, there are switch-off policy initiatives in France, which seek to set limits on the number of hours that an employee can be “linked-in” (accessing work systems and emails). In Germany, the Westphalia region is considering banning office communications in the evenings and during vacations, a practice that has already been established by VW, BMW, and Deutsche Telekom, which banned after-hours calls and emails to workers. On the other side, the solution to WLB is cast in terms of total flexibility with employees setting the pace of work and schedules and telecommuting rather than traveling to work. Work becomes an activity, not a place; rewards are based on performance and results, not on the hours you put in at the workplace. In this vision of future work, the workplace would become superfluous and employment conditional on evaluated performance. Is this a workers’ utopia that would enhance the capabilities of individuals for a better WLB and quality of life? Or is this a scenario with high levels of uncertainty, longer working days, the removal of boundaries between working life and other spheres of life, and lastly, the loss of community among workers who interact at the workplace?

Headline image: Seconds Out by dogwelder. CC BY-NC 2.0 via flickr

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In central Africa, the World Food Program is shifting from aid in kind to cash and vouchers in the refugee camps that it runs. The hope is to create benefits for the surrounding host-country economies as well as for the refugees, themselves.

In West Gonja, Ghana, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization is investing in cassava processing and marketing, in the hope of stimulating incomes, employment, and welfare in one of the country’s poorest regions.

In a small-scale fishery in the Philippines, the government hopes to introduce new regulations to ensure the fishery’s long-term sustainability. The long-term gains are clear, but in the short run, nobody knows what limiting access will mean for an economy in which most fisher households are poor, and income from fishing is vital to these as well as other poor households with whom they interact.

These are classic situations in which local economy-wide impact evaluation (LEWIE) methods can be incredibly useful. These methods model the way local economies function, and can be used to simulate how these economies might behave under shifting conditions. In cases such as those mentioned above, impacts depend critically on how local economies adjust. For example, if local supply responses around refugee camps or in the cassava-producing communities of West Gonja are low, policies that simulate demand could raise prices and harm people they intend to benefit, with collateral damage on other linked sectors and household groups.

For those designing or evaluating a policy or program, LEWIE methods can highlight impacts not only on those directly affected by the intervention, but also the spillover impacts around them. Policy makers and donors want to know what sorts of complementary interventions might be needed in order to make sure that their programs are successful. Often, answers are needed before programs and policies are put into place. LEWIE methods were designed to provide such answers.  The stakes are high, and as always, time and resources are limited.

We find that LEWIE often has impacts far beyond what we anticipate when we begin an evaluation. Often, it reveals benefits missed by other approaches. Documenting likely impacts beyond those affected directly by an intervention ex-ante can tip the cost-benefit scale in favor of funding the intervention. More and more, governments and donors want to know that a development project not only benefits targeted households and sectors but also creates positive economic spillovers—and they want to know what can be done to enhance those spillovers. Documenting impacts beyond the treated can be critical in order to garner political and institutional support for projects and policies.

Here’s a recent example: Our LEWIE of LEAP, Ghana’s flagship social cash-transfer program, found that each cedi transferred to a poor household increases local income by as many as 2.5 cedi. (A summary of this evaluation can be found at the UN-FAO’s From Protection to Production website.

Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama, opening the Pan-African Conference on Inequalities last April, stated: “LEAP has had a positive impact on local economic growth. Beneficiaries spend about 80 percent of their income on the local economy. Every GH1 transferred to a beneficiary has the potential of increasing the local economy by GH2.50.” His goal was clear: to demonstrate that social protection and economic growth can be complements. It appears that LEAP accomplishes both. Read the President’s speech.

Understanding LEWIE is basic to designing rigorous and innovative RCTs. Development projects are likely to create spillovers within treated localities as well as with neighboring ones. LEWIE gives us a way of thinking about these spillovers so that RCTs capture them and avoid control-group contamination and other problems that often raise questions about the validity of experimental results.

Most practitioners and policy makers do not construct LEWIE models or carry out RCTs, but they often find themselves involved in designing interventions and coming up with strategies to evaluate their impacts. Insights from LEWIE studies, which have been carried out for a wide variety of interventions in diverse contexts, can inform their work, at a time when more and more donors include “local economy impacts” in their list of evaluation criteria. LEWIE changes the way we think about impacts, direct or indirect, on people who are so vulnerable that we cannot risk being wrong.

Headline image credit: Highway Fruit Stall, by flöschen. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr

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In times of economic crisis, politicians and analysts alike are typically quick to call for structural reforms to stimulate economic growth. Job security regulations are often identified as a policy area in need of such reforms. These regulations restrict the managerial capacity to dismiss employees to allow for downsizing or to replace workers and use new forms of employment such as fixed-term contracts when hiring new workers. Mainstream economics typically blames such regulations for the sclerosis of European labour markets, in particular in southern Europe. But so far, European countries have mostly failed to reform dismissal protection – despite the economic crisis and pressure from international organizations. Why are these regulations so difficult to reform (i.e. dismantle)?

The easy answer is, of course, that some powerful groups, in particular trade unions, oppose these reforms. However, opposition to reform is costly, and unions have been under massive political pressure in recent years to assent to such structural reforms. Why are unions so adamantly opposed to structural reforms and in particular the reduction of dismissal protection in case of open-ended contracts? What is so special about these regulations?

Job security regulations are more important to trade unions than one might think at first sight. In fact, trade unions have at least three reasons to fight the reform of dismissal protection in case of open-ended contracts. The first reason is rather straightforward: unions need to represent their members’ interest in statutory dismissal protection. The two other reasons, however, are often overlooked: unions have an organizational interest in retaining dismissal protection because these regulations prevent employers hostile to trade unions from singling out union members in workforce reductions. Put differently, protection against arbitrary dismissal also involves the protection of the local union organization against anti-union employers. In addition, unions have an interest in protecting their involvement in the administration of dismissals because this involvement allows them to influence management decisions at the company level. In many countries, job security regulations give trade unions important co-decision rights in case of dismissals (e.g. Swedish regulations award unions the right to co-decide the selection of workers in case of dismissals for economic reasons). Put simply, job security regulations often make unions relevant actors in the workplace.

Of course, these three reasons don’t have the same weight in all European countries. For instance, the fear of employers hostile to unions is probably more important in southern European countries characterized by conflictual industrial relations (in most of these countries, employers were not required to recognize local union representations before the 1970s), while the involvement in the administration of dismissals is particularly important in countries characterized by long traditions of cooperative industrial relations (e.g. Germany and Sweden). Everywhere though, unions have sufficient reason to fight any reform of dismissal protection.

Facing such union resistance, governments have typically resorted to the deregulation of temporary employment. Unions have been more accepting of such two-tier reforms because temporarily employed workers are underrepresented among the union rank-and-file and because in the case of temporary employment unions have no organizational interests to defend. The deregulation of temporary employment (while the protection awarded to workers on open-ended contracts has remained more or less constant) has become a prominent example of so-called dualization processes, which are characterized by a differential treatment of workers in standard employment relationships (‘insiders’) and workers in more precarious employment relationships (‘outsiders’). Arguably, in some countries like Italy, the share of workers benefitting from (overly?) strict dismissal protection is now lower than the share of workers benefitting from hardly any dismissal protection at all.

So where are we standing after about three decades of calls for structural reforms such as the deregulation of job security? The three aforementioned reasons for unions to oppose the reform of dismissal protection in case of open-ended contracts are still there. The average union member still benefits from these regulations, unions continue to be worried about employers taking advantage of collective dismissals to rid themselves of unionized workers, and the institutional involvement in the administration of dismissals continues to be an important source of union power – in particular in times of dwindling membership.

Today, however, unions have a fourth reason to oppose structural reforms. For three decades they have reluctantly assented to two-tier reforms only to be confronted with further calls for numerical flexibility. By now there are as many workers on precarious contracts as there are workers on regular open-ended contracts – in particular in the countries that are said to be in greatest need of structural reforms. Nevertheless, calls for reform focus almost exclusively on dismissal protection of workers on open-ended contracts rather than on measures to improve the lot of the disadvantaged young, women, or elderly on precarious contracts. You don’t have to be a radical Italian trade unionist to find this one-sidedness a little bit odd.

The post Why are structural reforms so difficult? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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By John Macmillan

The current series of Judicial Pension Scheme claims have raised two interesting points under the most recent Employment Tribunals Rules, introduced in July 2013. Although ultimately neither required determination, the issues highlighted are worth exploring.

The first issue is where the dividing line between preliminary and final hearings should fall. Rule 57 defines a final hearing as one “at which the Tribunal determines the claim or such parts as remain outstanding following the initial consideration (under rule 26) or any preliminary hearing.” The problem is the seemingly very broad definition of “preliminary issue” being one of the things which a tribunal may determine at a preliminary hearing.

A preliminary issue in the context of a complaint means “any substantive issue which may determine liability…” (r. 53(2)). Again, the definition of “substantive” is not entirely clear. It is a word much misused by the drafters of previous iterations of the Rules but is likely to mean something which exists independently of the main issue in the proceedings. So (as per one of the examples in r. 53(2)), in a complaint of unfair dismissal, whether there has been a dismissal or not would be a substantive issue. But then, so it would appear, is a dispute over the reason for the dismissal, an issue historically always dealt with as part of the final hearing. In this context the problem is largely academic except in those very rare cases where a full tribunal will sit for the final hearing. It remains potentially an area of practical difficulty in discrimination claims.

In the current Judicial Pension Scheme cases, three principal issues have fallen for determination at a series of hearings that all parties have agreed to define as preliminary hearings. The first is whether a claimant holding a particular fee-paid judicial office is engaged in the same or broadly similar work as a named comparator who is salaried holder of another, sometimes quite different, judicial office. That looks like a perfectly bona fide preliminary issue as the comparator hurdle must be cleared in order to demonstrate entitlement to bring the proceedings.

The next logical question would then be whether there has been less favourable treatment, e.g. in the payment of fees for attending training. This too seems to have a life independent of the main question, namely whether there has been a breach of the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000.

The third question, whether any less favourable treatment has been objectively justified, seems – instinctively – much less ripe for preliminary determination, although in these cases it has been treated as a preliminary issue without objection. Based on these decisions, my understanding is that the drafting of the definition of “preliminary issue” is deliberately wide.

A second point raised by the recent JPS claims is how the costs rules should be applied to lead cases (r. 36). Rule 74(1) defines costs in terms of those incurred by or on behalf of the receiving party who – in a case to which r. 36 applies – appears to be the lead claimant. But in some cases, many people may have contributed to a fighting fund, while the lead claimant’s contribution to that fund may have been negligible. This difficulty is starkly demonstrated by the question of fees where a multiple has come together as the result of many claimants presenting their own claims without reference to each other over a period of time. In this case, each would incurr a separate issue fee. While the problem over legal costs might be resolved by an agreement between all the claimants – in which the lead claimant agrees to take primary responsibility for the costs subject to an indemnity from the related case claimants – such situations are likely to rare and would not seem to be applicable to the fees incurred by individuals in any event. There is a similar problem where the respondent seeks costs against a lead claimant.

However, r. 36(2) may provide a solution. It seems likely that the costs could and probably should be treated as one of the common or related issues in the case. If so, then the decision made is binding on all the parties in the related cases. Careful wording of the judgement would be required, but there seems little doubt that an order that the respondent pays the lead claimant’s tribunal fees would apply to the fees of all other claimants. Similarly, a judgement that the lead claimant pays the respondent’s costs would be enforceable against all claimants. Whether the judgement should be for a full or proportionate amount should then be a matter for determination on the facts of each case. The obvious problem then becomes one of enforcement.

John Macmillan was formerly a Regional Employment Judge, East Midlands Region, and is now a fee-paid Employment Judge. He is the author of Blackstone’s Guide to the Employment Tribunals Rules 2013 and the Fees Order.

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Image credit: Gavel. By Kuzma, via iStockphoto.

The post Definitions and dividing lines in the Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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The Sun is hiring!

We’re searching for an Associate Publisher to direct business operations, finance, and personnel. We also have openings for a Manuscript Editor and an Editorial Assistant. All three positions are full-time and based in our Chapel Hill, North Carolina, office. Click the job titles below for details. (No e-mails, phone calls, faxes, or surprise visits, please.)

Associate Publisher

Manuscript Editor

Editorial Assistant

The Sun is hiring!

We're searching for an Associate Publisher to direct business operations, finance, and personnel. We also have openings for a Manuscript Editor and an Editorial Assistant. All three positions are full-time and based in our Chapel Hill, North Carolina, office. Click the job titles below for details. (No e-mails, phone calls, faxes, or surprise visits, please.)

Associate Publisher

Manuscript Editor

Editorial Assistant

We need a full-time Associate Publisher to direct business operations, finance, and personnel at The Sun, a nonprofit, ad-free magazine in its forty-first year of publication. This position is in our editorial office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The job requires a head for business, a heart for all that The Sun represents, and experience as a compassionate, skillful manager. We offer competitive compensation, excellent benefits, and an appealing work environment. Click here for details.

If you’re not interested in this position, will you please help us spread the word? 

POSITION OPENING
Managing Editor, Quiddity
(Full-time, salaried, benefits, start date 1 June 2013)
Position Summary
· Manage the production of Quiddity's international literary journal (print and electronic components), radio program, and website, upholding all quality, calendar, and budgetary expectations; manage and advance the distribution of Quiddity's international literary journal and public-radio program through traditional and emerging venues

Essential Job Responsibilities
· Oversee the submission systems (electronic and traditional) and acquisition processes for the print journal reading series, and radio program, including the coordination of query and galley correspondence as well as reading series proposals and contests
· Coordinate and execute all editing and production schedules for the journal, radio, and website; coordinate the production schedule for the public-radio program; coordinate editorial board and staff meetings; support editorial board and staff through production processes
· Advance Quiddity's subscriber base, listener base, readership, and distribution using established and emerging resources
· Perform the layout for the journal's interior print pages and its electronic format(s), design covers and promotional materials, manage web design, and expand web content
· Supervise and mentor student interns and cultivate Quiddity's internship program, as well as other duties as assigned relative to academic affairs

Minimum Job Requirements
· MA, MFA, or MSc in Creative Writing, English, Communications, or related field
· At least one year of experience with a print publication or journal of national distribution
· Teaching experience with potential to supervise internships

Specific Skills
· Must possess savvy graphic design skills and be well versed in user-friendly, multimedia web development and social media
· Proficiency in web design software and CSS, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Audition (or similar software) Outlook, Excel, Access, File Transfer Protocol
· Exceptional reading, writing, and proofing skills
· Outstanding professional communication skills
· Established track-record of organizational management and follow-through
· Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
· Ability to work outside of regular business hours when necessary
· Ability to work as part of a collaborative team

Supervisory Responsibility
· Supervise and mentor undergraduate student interns enrolled in Quiddity's internship program

Other Functions
· With the approval of both the division chair and the supervisor, may teach courses in the Writing and Publishing and Communication Arts degree programs for an additional stipend at the qualifying adjunct pay rate

Working Conditions
· Twelve-month position, forty hours per week performed in-office, on-campus

Send résumé or CV and letter of application detailing experience to:

Quiddity
1500 N 5th Street
Springfield, IL 62702

Review of applications begins immediately.

The Department of English at Millsaps College invites applications for a one-year teaching fellowship in creative writing to begin in August 2013. The fellow will teach two courses per semester, including an advanced course in the writer's genre, and will assist with departmental activities. The ideal candidate plans a career that involves college-level teaching and can demonstrate a commitment to the goals and principles of a liberal arts education. Preference will be given to candidates who work in multiple genres, including but not limited to narrative nonfiction, journalism, playwriting, screenwriting, environmental writing, or the graphic novel; experience teaching courses involving digital technology is a plus.

A Ph.D.or M.F.A. in English or Creative Writing is required; evidence of teaching excellence and significant publication is essential. The fellow will also be expected to serve as an informal mentor to students in the three majors (literature, creative writing, and communication studies) housed in the English department.

To apply, submit the following materials by email at:

writes(AT)millsaps.edu (Change (AT) to @ )

a cover letter addressed to Dr. Eric Griffin, Chair, Department of English, which discusses teaching philosophy and provides specific examples of effective teaching practices; a curriculum vitae; an unofficial graduate transcript; three confidential letters of reference; and a writing sample of no more than 25 pages (more than one genre preferred). All applications should be complete by Friday, March 8, 2013.

 Millsaps College is a nationally ranked liberal arts college in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi. We offer a competitive salary including health and other benefits, a travel and research stipend of $2000, and reimbursement for moving expenses. Employment will be contingent on complete background verification.

Included in Colleges that Change Lives, Millsaps is committed to academic excellence and pedagogical innovation. Millsaps is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from minorities. For more information about the college and the English department see our website.
>

By John Knowles

If you become wealthier tomorrow, say through winning the lottery, would you spend more or less working than you do now? Standard economic models predict you would work less. In fact a substantial segment of American society has indeed become wealthier over the last 40 years — married men. The reason is that wives’ earnings now make a much larger contribution to household income than in the past.  However married men do not work less now on average than they did in the 1970s.  This is intriguing because it suggests there is something important missing in economic explanations of  the rise in labor supply of married women over the same period.

One possibility is that what we are seeing here are the aggregate effects of bargaining between spouses. This is plausible because there was a substantial narrowing of the male-female wage gap over the period. The ratio of women’s to men’s average wages; starting from about 0.57 in the 1964-1974 period, rose rapidly to 0.78 in the early 1990s.  Even if we smooth out the fluctuations, the graph shows an average ratio of 0.75 in the 1990s, compared to 0.57 in the early 1970s.

The closing of the male-female wage gap suggests a relative improvement in the economic status of non-married women compared to non-married men. According to bargaining models of the household, we should expect to see a better deal for wives—control over a larger share of household resources – because they don’t need marriage as much as they used to. We should see that the share of household wealth spent on the wife increases relative to that spent on the husband.

Bargaining models of household behavior are rare in macroeconomics. Instead, the standard assumption is that households behave as if they were maximizing a fixed utility function. Known as the “unitary” model of the household, a basic implication is that when a good A becomes more expensive relative to another good B, the ratio of A to B that the household consumes should decline.  When women’s wages rose relative to men’s, that increased the cost of wives’ leisure relative to that of husbands. The ratio of husbands’ leisure time to that of wives should therefore have increased.

In the bargaining model there is an additional potential effect on leisure: as the share of wealth the household spends on the wife increases, it should spend more on the wife’s leisure. Therefore the ratio of husband’s to wife’s leisure could increase or decrease, depending on the responsiveness of the bargaining solution to changes in the relative status of the spouses as singles.

To measure the change in relative leisure requires data on unpaid work, such as time spent on grocery shopping and chores around the house.  The American Time-Use Survey is an important source for 2003 and later, and there also exist precursor surveys that can be used  for some earlier years. The main limitation of these surveys is that they sample individuals, not couples, so one cannot measure the leisure ratio of individual households.  Instead measurement consists of the average leisure of wives compared to that of husbands. The paper also shows the results of controlling for age and education. Overall, the message is clear; the relative leisure of married couples was essentially the same in 2003 as in 1975, about 1.05.

One can explain the stability of the leisure ratio through bargaining; the wife gets a higher share of the marriage’s resources when her wage increases, and this offsets the rise in the price of her leisure.  This raises a set of essentially  quantitative questions: Suppose that marital bargaining really did determine labor supply how big are the mistakes one would make in predicting labor supply by using a model without bargaining?  To provide answers, I design a mathematical  model of marriage and bargaining to resemble as closely as possible the ‘representative agent’ of canonical macro models.  I use the model to measure the impact on labor supply of  the closing of the gender wage gap, as well as other shocks, such as improvements to home -production technology.

People in the model use their share of household’s resources to buy themselves leisure and private consumption.  They also allocate time to unpaid labor at home to produce a public consumption good that both spouses can enjoy together.  We can therefore calibrate the  model to exactly match the average time-allocation patterns observed in American time-use data. The calibrated model can then be used to compare the effects of the economic shocks in the bargaining and unitary models.

The results show that the rising of women’s wages can generate simultaneously the observed increase in married women’s paid work and the relative stability of that of the husbands. Bargaining is critical however; the unitary model, if calibrated to match the 1970s generates far too much of an increase in the wife’s paid labor, and far too large a decline in that of the men; in both cases, the prediction error is on the order of 2-3 weekly hours, about 10% of per-capita labor supply. In terms of aggregate labor, the error is much smaller because these sex-specific errors largely offset each other.

The bottom line therefore is that if, as is often the case, the research question does not require us to distinguish between the labor of different household or spouse types, then it may be reasonable to ignore bargaining between spouses.  However if we need to understand the allocation of time across men and women, then models with bargaining have a lot to contribute.

John Knowles is a professor of economics at the University of Southampton. He was born in the UK and schooled in Canada, Spain and the Bahamas. After completing his PhD at the University of Rochester (NY, USA) in 1998, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and returned to the UK in 2008. His current research focuses on using mathematical models to analyze trends in marriage and unmarried birth rates in the US and Europe. He is the author of the paper ‘Why are Married Men Working So Much? An Aggregate Analysis of Intra-Household Bargaining and Labour Supply’, published in The Review of Economics Studies.

The Review of Economic Studies aims to encourage research in theoretical and applied economics, especially by young economists. It is widely recognised as one of the core top-five economics journals, with a reputation for publishing path-breaking papers, and is essential reading for economists.

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Restaurants, Parks, Beaches and retail used to employ teen in bulk.

                I took my first job at the age of 14. It wasn’t by choice. I had gotten into enough trouble during the school year that my dad decided it was a good idea to keep me busy.  I worked as a student aid for the New York City Board of Education. My dad ran summer school every year, for as long as I remember.  Every morning we would wake up before the sun rose, and we would drive in. We would grab breakfast, and we would talk mostly about the previous day.

                That first job is special to me. Not just for the obvious reasons above, but because I still vividly remember my failures, struggles and successes. I remember my mentors who showed me what it meant to lead. I also remember the bad bosses who accomplished everything through verbal abuse.  Do you remember the first person who talked down to you at work?   I learned some of the most important lessons of my life at that job, and at the other summer jobs I held as a teen.  My summer jobs provided me with the opportunity to make mistakes at work while the stakes were still low.

                Last summer, less than thirty percent of teens had the opportunity to work.  Most of the teens who worked got their jobs due to the intervention of their parents. Like me, those teens have a much easier time getting work.  Those worst affected, as usual, are the teens that come from low income families. There are several reasons why this is the case, but I believe the most significant as the lack of transportation.

                Jobs, in general, are bound to locations.  As adults, we have the ability to relocate or hopefully commute. As jobs become scarce in one space, we can pick up and move to another space. In the book, “The new Geography of Jobs”  by the economist Enrico Moretti, the author outlines where jobs are and where they will likely be in the future of America.  It is useful for getting teens to think about the future in terms of location as well a career.

                I am concerned though that their experiences will shape them like my experiences shaped me. But while I had the opportunity to grow, they will instead be shaped by the endless search for work. Our economic reality is bleak enough to intimidate those graduating from college. It won’t help us or the teens we serve if they lose faith something is out there for them before they even get to college.

                My solution has been to take an active part in their job search.

Have you fallen into a black hole of office debris and battled to rise above the clutter, rather than drown before you can finish writing that opus to the literary world? Did you accidentally come across that reference book that the library made you pay for when you didn’t remember having ever seen it?

What about that brownie that disappeared from your desk three weeks ago that you accused your five year old of absconding with? Does any of this sound familiar?

If not, you’re either fanatically organized, blessed beyond measure, or not a writer.

This past year I’ve been trying desperately to keep my office area organized and easily accessible. With my life in constant flux at the moment, keeping my work space organized is becoming a nightmare. Living in limbo, as we are, doesn’t make for a well-ordered life.

Take my desk, please! I’ve lost control of it. When we moved into the apartment complex a couple of years ago, I didn’t have a desk. To remedy the situation, I purchased an eight foot Formica countertop at the local home improvement center and added six thick table legs with mounting brackets. The unit is sturdy, easily cleaned, and can be disassembled when necessity demands a move to another location.

Plenty of work space is provided for computer, layout work, bins of office supplies, etc. What more could I want? Two—2-drawer file cabinets nestle nicely beneath, within easy reach from my desk chair. So handy. A large trash can has a home where I can toss odds and ends for later removal. The printer caddy, all-in-one printing machine and bookshelf table resides perpendicular to the computer end. Great set-up, don’t you think?

I thought so, too. A few weeks after installation and working appreciation, that fantastic work area became a catch all for everything that entered the room; library books disappeared under current working project files, mail, magazines, minor office supplies, brochures, you-name-it. When frustration during a hunt for materials became too much for me, organization blazed with flames fanned by a clean-up whirlwind.

Except when we were on our country tour during the winter of 2010-11, I’ve fought this Battle of the Debris every couple of months since creating this work space. Ask any of my writing buddies. They’ve heard about my efforts on a few occasions.

This week’s clean-up effort, I’ve decided, will be my last. I discovered black mold growing up the outside corner wall of my closet. I think I found the cause for our continuous allergy problems.

Maintenance is tracking down the problem outside before developing a real solution. I’m learning patience today. In the meantime, everything stored in that end of the closet clutters the living room and the rest of my bedroom.

You ask “What does that have to do with organizing your office?” I answer “Everything!” I’ve finally arrived at that point where I can no longer ignore the clutter, no longer blame work/life circumstances, and no longer believe that I’m actually not hoarding useless “stuff.”

The campaign to permanently organize my office life began with the removal of all those boxes from the closet. This morning I went through the first set of bagged debris and boxed minutiae, sorting out that for which I had no need. Everything not needed for my file cabinets, but necessary to keep, will g