Minimum Wage Regulation under Devolution in Northern Ireland

This paper assesses the development and functioning of regional minimum wage regulation in Northern Ireland in the interwar period under a federal form of devolution. Unlike current devolution arrangements in Scotland and Wales, this gave the Stormont Parliament powers over employment and minimum wage regulation. Northern Ireland Trade Boards were set up by the Ulster Unionist Government under the Trade Boards (Northern Ireland) Act 1923 and functioned along the same lines as those in Great Britain. Uniquely in the UK in this period, employer opposition resulted in the main Trade Board in the Irish Linen Industry being replaced by voluntary collective bargaining machinery. About one-quarter of employees were covered by minimum wage regulation, including two-thirds of females in Belfast, keeping a protective floor under low pay.

Industrial applications of ionic liquids

The potential to use Ionic Liquids (ILs) as novel solvents or fluids for a diverse range of applications has become increasingly rent as researchers in academia and try respond to challenges from atmospheric emissions and disposal of many common solvents by evaluating novel reaction media. The intrinsic non-volatile nature of ILs provides an opportunity to reduce, or even completely eliminate, hazardous and toxic emissions to the atmosphere, thus providing the promise for significant environmental benefits. In synthesis and catalysis, ILs have been used as solvents (or solvents and catalysts), with the greatest current effort on using the ILs as alternatives to VOCs. In contrast, electrochemical studies hove utills'ed the fact that ILs are liquid rather than solids to provide liquid electrolytes without needing to odd an additional solvent. is overview appraiso an appraisal of potential to use ILs in industrial applications, illustrating some areas where practical uses are being developed, and how, throuqh understanding ionic liquids in a conceptuo level, new opportunities ore continuing to evolve.

Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre-industrial England

This article compares chronologies reconstructed from historical records of prices, wages, grain harvests, and population with corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climatic variations derived from dendrochronology and Greenland ice-cores. It demonstrates that in pre-industrial, and especially late medieval, England, short-term environmental shocks and more enduring shifts in environmental conditions (sometimes acting in concert with biological agencies) exercised a powerful influence upon the balance struck between population and available resources via their effects upon the reproduction, health and life expectancy of humans, crops, and livestock. Prevailing socio-economic conditions and institutions, in turn, shaped society's susceptibility to these environmental shocks and shifts.

A Bayesian Network Hybrid Model for Representing Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

The paper introduces a new modeling approach that represents the waiting times in an Accident and Emergency (A&E) Department in a UK based National Health Service (NHS) hospital. The technique uses Bayesian networks to capture the heterogeneity of arriving patients by representing how patient covariates interact to influence their waiting times in the department. Such waiting times have been reviewed by the NHS as a means of investigating the efficiency of A&E departments (Emergency Rooms) and how they operate. As a result activity targets are now established based on the patient total waiting times with much emphasis on trolley waits.

Will attracting the creative class boost economic growth in old industrial regions? A case study of Scotland

Attracting in-migration of the creative class has been argued by Florida (2002) to be a route to higher economic growth in the era of the knowledge economy. This paper critically evaluates this proposition in relation to old industrial regions using the example of Scotland. The paper presents an assessment of, in the first instance, to what extent there is a shortage of skilled, talented and entrepreneurial individuals and, in the second instance, whether a talent attraction strategy alone can hope to attract such people to Scotland. It is proposed that for most migrants the availability of appropriate economic opportunities is a prerequisite for mobility. However, despite uncertain evidence that place attractiveness is a catalyst to mobility among the so-called creative class, this is not a reason for dismissing talent attraction programmes. Instead it is argued that talent attraction programmes have the potential to contribute to old industrial economies, but their success will be greatest when talent attraction is carefully targeted and based on economic realities rather than the marketing of ethereal conceptions of place attractiveness.

Are Good Industrial Relations Good for the Economy?

Recent US microeconomic analysis indicates that good industrial relations might improve firm performance. Of late, it has also been claimed that the benefits of industrial relations quality - proxied inversely by a strikes variable - could also extend to the macroeconomy. Using cross-country data, we find that, independent of other labor market institutions, a lower strike volume is associated with lower unemployment. Although there is a separate line of causation running from unemployment to strikes, our analysis suggests that this is not dominant. That said, support for the notion that macro performance owes something to good industrial relations is, however, weakened once we formally control for strike endogeneity.