Unemployment as a problem in the development of industrial societies: the English experience

Unemployment, as a concept and as a mass phenomenon, is a relatively new thing in western society. It was largely elaborated and experienced in the period from the 1890s to the 1930s. What did it mean to be ‘unemployed’ before that time?. What was the nature of ‘the economy of the poor’, and how far did unemployment in the household and informal economy balance unemployment in the formal economy? Using largely the evidence of Poor Law policies and practices, this paper considers the attitudes to the unemployed since Elizabethan times, and what this tells us about the conditions of life and work of the labouring population in England before the public recognition and definition of the specific status of being unemployed. It then considers the period, from the 1890s to the 1940s, in which ‘full employment’ came to be inscribed on the banner of all industrial societies. Finally it considers the implications of this account for full employment in the future of industrial societies, and the extent to which we should continue to regard this as a possible or desirable aim.     

Union presence and executive compensation: An exploratory study

While executive compensation has historically attracted considerable attention and controversy, this issue is becoming increasingly more contentious as organizations attempt to cut labor costs through reengineering and downsizing. Unions, governments, and workers are becoming critical of seemingly excessive executive compensation while employees are asked to make concessions. In fact, many labor organizations are specif-ically targeting executive compensation for criticisms: Witness their web sites tracking executive pay and numerous press releases and public statements. However, do unions, through their presence in a firm, affect executive compensation? While there is con-siderable research on the determinants and correlates of executive compensation, the literature is silent on the role of unions. We investigate the distinctive effects of union presence with data on a sample of Canadianbased metalmining firms. The differences between union and nonunion firms, as well as the unique effects of union presence, are analyzed and future research suggested.     

Optimal weighing designs with a string property

We consider the usual (spring balance) weighing design set-up with the design matrix having a string property meaning thereby that in every row of it, there is exactly one run of 1's (the rest of the elements being 0's). We have investigated some interesting features of such matrices and used them in deriving various optimality results.     

Long-term planning for Indian shipping

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the urgent need for a comprehensive long-term plan for Indian shipping industry in consonance with the requirements of domestic and overseas trade. The problems bedevilling the shipping industry are analysed in order to focus on the constituents of a comprehensive long-term plan. Though this analysis is related to the Indian environment, it is equally pertinent to the most developing countries.     

Estimation of population product in presence of non-response in successive sampling

The design of this paper is to examine the problem of estimation of finite population product in mail surveys for the current occasion in the context of sampling on two occasions is attempted when there is non-response on both the occasions. Estimators for the current occasion are derived as a particular case when there is non-response on first and second occasion only. The gain in efficiency of the proposed estimate over the direct estimate using no information gathered on the first occasion is computed. The proposed strategy has been compared with other estimators. An empirical study is carried out to study the performance of the proposed strategy.     

Economic security for the elderly in India: an overview

The basic concept of social security is not new in India. Traditionally, a sort of moral economy existed to provide security to older destitute and other vulnerable groups in society. However, gradually, traditional support systems are disappearing, and state-based social security systems have come into existence. Under standardized economic security policies, government is covering retirement benefits for those in the organized sector; economic security benefits for those in the unorganized sector; and old-age pension for rural elderly. These are contributory as well as non-contributory programs. Besides life insurance approaches, savings-linked insurance and Annapurna (food security) are other important programs. However, in terms of coverage, program quality and effectiveness have been largely criticized by social security experts, suggesting immediate reforms to old-age programs.     

Unbiased estimation of the variance of the Graybill-Deal estimator of the common mean of several normal populations

An identity for the chi-squared distribution is used to derive an unbiased estimator of the variance of the familiar Graybill-Deal (1959) estimator of the common mean of several normal populations with possibly different unknown variances. This result appears to be new. It is observed that the unbiased estimator is a convergent series whose suitable truncation allows unbiased estimation up to any desired degree of accuracy.