The largest U.S. commercial banks are currently in theprocess of restructuring their retail operations. A stagnantdeposit base and intense competition in the marketplacefor financial services have made the overhead costs of anextensive branch network increasingly onerous. At thesame time,...

The securities industry in the New York–New Jerseyregion is currently enjoying strong growth in employmentand salaries. The industry is particularly important to theregion because it is concentrated locally and pays highwages. Although vulnerable to stock and bond marketfluctuations, the...

In this paper we use microdata on employment and earnings from avariety of industrialised countries to investigate the family gap in pay –the differential in hourly wages between women with children andwomen without children. We present results from seven countries:Australia, Canada, the...

Older men have experienced the largest falls in employment over thelast twenty years. Two-fifths of men aged between 55 and 65 are withoutwork, compared to one-fifth in 1979, and the difference is equivalent to600,000 fewer jobs for this age group alone. Older women have notshared in the general...

The principal aim of Section F of the British Association is to show how economicanalysis can be applied to illuminate important issues of public concern. The themefor the 1997 Section F Meeting of “Equality and Opportunity” surely satisfied thiscriterion. The subject matter is highly...

This paper uses microdata from the United States, Britain, and Japan toexamine the effects of family leave coverage on women's employment afterchildbirth. Our three sample countries provide a range of family leavepolicy regimes. The United States had no national family leave legislationprior to...

This paper is an attempt to assess the extent to which the behaviour of anindividual is the result of the constraints that he or she faces – factorsbeyond individual control - or the result of the exercise of his or herpreferences. The study concentrates on participation or non-participationin...

This paper is motivated by the lack of any obvious relationship betweenaggregate poverty and unemployment in Great Britain. We derive aframework based on individuals’ risks of unemployment and poverty,and how these vary over the economic cycle. Analysing the BritishHousehold Panel Survey for...