In the past few years the informal sector in countries in transition hasincreasingly become the focus of research, public policy and the media.The term ‘informal sector’ has been used to describe an extremely widespectrum of activities, which do not necessarily have much in common,such as...

‘Work-life balance’ generally refers to how people may combine paid employmentwith family responsibilities. The UK government’s attempts to promote work-lifebalance are connected to wider concerns to maximise labour-force participation andinclude policies on tax credits, child care and...

Truancy is often seen as irrational behaviour on the part of school ageyouth. This paper takes the opposite view and models truancy as thesolution to a time allocation problem in which youths derive currentreturns from activities that reduce time spent at school. The model isestimated using a US...

This paper uses recently digitised samples of apprentices and masters in London and Bristol to quantify the practice of apprenticeship in the late 17th century. Apprenticeship appears much more fluid than is traditionally understood. Many apprentices did not complete their terms of indenture;...

This paper studies the way workers and firms behaved in a highly cyclical sector such as the cotton textile industry, which encompassed 1/5 of the Catalan industrial workforce in the early 20th century. Using firm level evidence from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the paper shows that,...

[...]In part, this collection of papers derives from the impact of Subaltern Studies on approaches to the history of labour. While the contributions may not be located within ‘subalternism’, to differing degrees they reflect responses in the literature to that paradigm. At the very least,...