Appropriate representation of minorities is a fundamental manifestation of an affirmative action policy. One of the main aims of the article is to call attention to the fact that appropriate representation (as indeed affirmative action more generally) comes in at least two different types. The...

The cohorts of women born at the turn of the 20th century increased markedly their participation in the labor market when older. These are the first cohorts who worked after their childbearing years. In this paper, we document a link between their work behavior and the Great Depression. We show...

The baby-boom and subsequent baby-bust have shaped much of the history of the second half of the 20th century; yet it is still largely unclear what caused them. This paper presents a new unified explanation of the fertility Boom-Bust that links the latter to the Great Depression and the...

This paper investigates educational attainment and economic performance of ethnic minority immigrants and their children in Britain, in comparison to white British born. We find that ethnic minority immigrants and their children are on average better educated in comparison to their British born...

The new Routledge History of Poverty, c. 1450-1800 provides neither a "history" nor a coherent concept of "poverty" and rests on an inappropriate time scale. However, a closer discussion of these flaws enables a more consistent perspective, based on the idea that the interplay of "labour" and...

This paper extends prior theory linking present-day sex ratios to present-day propensity for entrepreneurship among men backward in time to explore the long-run gender origins of entrepreneurship. We argue that present-day propensity for entrepreneurship among men will be higher in...

The study attempts to highlight the interrelation between three central points in the ongoing debate on the political economy of development: viability, surplus, and class-formation. A case study of the development of rural labour systems in Northern Nigeria is meant to provide both a better...

Throughout the period 1871-1938, the average British worker was better off than the average German worker, but there were significant differences between major sectors. For the aggregate economy, the real wage gap was about the same as the labour productivity gap, but again there were important...

The relationship between training and firm-level employment adjustment given an unanticipated fall in product demand has been central to human capital theory. The most cataclysmic negative output shock occurred in 1929-30. At this time, easily the most important source of United Kingdom general...