The British engineering industry experienced extreme production and employment pressures during the rearmament period that preceded the Second World War and in the early war years. Did it react by placing a greater emphasis on incentive-compatible payment methods? This paper examines the...

Between mid-1939 and mid-1943 almost 2.2 million additional women were recruited into Britain's essential war industries. These consisted, predominantly, of young women recruited into metal and chemical industries. Much of the increased labour supply was achieved through government directed...

This paper adds to the literature on the relationship between military service and long-term real earnings. Based on a regression discontinuity design it compares the earnings of age cohorts containing British men who were required to undertake post-war National Service with later cohorts who...

The strikes' literature is dominated by the causes and effects of strike action as they relate directly to strikers themselves. This paper considers another important group of affected workers - those individuals incidentally made idle as a result of the strike action of others. Using a unique...

This paper investigates the relative cyclical behavior of the pay of piece workers and hourly paid workers. It uses a unique data set of blue-collar workers in British engineering between 1926 and 1966. The statistics are obtained from the payrolls of firms belonging to the Engineering Employers...

Based on the British New Earnings Survey Panel Data for 1975-2001, this paper investigates the real hourly wage cyclicality of part-time and full-time females. Relative degrees of wage responsiveness are estimated in respect of job stayers, movers between jobs (involving either retaining...

On their intensive margins, firms in the British engineering industry adjusted to the severe falls in demand during the 1930s Depression by cutting hours of work. This provided an important means of reducing labour input and marginal labour costs, through movements from overtime to short-time...

Labor market responses to temporary aggregate demand shocks are commonly analyzed and discussed in terms of changes in employment and unemployment. However, it can be seriously misleading to ignore the interrelated behavior of hours worked.Work hours can be altered relatively speedily and...