The authors use British workplace data for 1980-98 to examine whether increased human resource management (HRM) practices coincided with union decline, consistent with the hypothesis that such practices act as a substitute for unionization. Two initial analyses show no important differences...

This paper considers the extent to which union decline in Britain has been characterized by convergence or divergence in union membership rates for people with different personal and job characteristics. It compares individual union membership in 1975 and 2001 to identify some significant...

We describe the socio-economic characteristics of street-gang areas in London, explore gang formation dynamics, and analyse the spatial correlation between gangs and violent crime. Gang areas form in areas with higher unemployment, lower education, and a higher proportion of lone-parent...

In this paper we consider the relationship between the firm's choice of capital structure and the unionisation status of the labour force. Empirical estimates of Tobit models explaining the firm level debt-equity ratio betwee 1986 and 1990 lend support to the view that unionisation is associated...

Housing prices within urban areas exhibit highly localized variation that cannot be explained solely by differences in the physical attributes of dwellings. We consider the role of local amenities and disamenities in generating price variation within urban areas, focusing on three highly...

This paper assesses the contribution of school autonomy – in particular, discretion in setting remuneration levels – to leadership salary differentials and inequality in English schools. It first shows there are head teacher salary differentials between academy schools (which have more...

Recent work on the economic effects of minimum wages has stressed that the standard economic model, where increases in minimum wages depress employment, is not supported by the empirical findings in some labour markets. In this paper we present a theoretical framework which is general enough to...

What have the economists contributed to the study of criminal behavior and crime control? In what follows, to motivate and describe the contributions to this edited volume, we discuss three domains: • A normative framework for evaluating criminal law and crime prevention, and the application...