Christine Greenhalgh

Innovation and Trade Performance in the United Kingdom

A popular explanation for the U.K.s poor trade performance in the postwar period is that insufficient attention was paid to the quality of goods offered to consumers. The authors explore the role of both price and quality factors in determining the net trade balances of a number of U.K. manufacturing and service industries. Particular attention is paid to the role of innovation, used empirically as a proxy for product improvement. The findings show considerable support for the view that an advanced industrial country like Britain needs to continually upgrade its products to avoid erosion of its domestic and international market shares. Copyright 1990 by Royal Economic Society.

Work History Patterns and the Occupational Attainment of Women

One of the main differences between the labour market behaviour of men and women lies in the discontinuity of labour force attachment exhibited by most women over their lifetime - largely, but not exclusively, for the purpose of raising a family. These interruptions to their labour market experience constitute an important influence on the labour market position of women and provide a potentially important factor in the explanation of their labour market disadvantate. Skills are obtained to a considerable extent through labour market experience and may be blunted in periods of absence from the labour force. In addition, absence from the labour force removes an individual labour market and may thereby reduce the probability of gaining extry to the better jobs on re-entry. The objectives of this paper are firstly to describe the various work-history patterns exhibited by U.K. women and, secondly, to quantify the effect of these life-cycle factors on the occupational attainment, occupational progress and earnings of women. The data source is the National Training Survey (NTS) which provides a unique retrospective longitudinal data set on the work histories of over 50,000 individuals (For details see Manpower Services Commission (1976).(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Intellectual property, technological advantage and trade performance of UK manufacturing industries

The technological advantage of advanced countries is often cited as a potential source of comparative advantage in world trade, although with internatonal mobility of capital this may not be sufficient to retain domestic production. Net trad volumes for a panel of UK manufacturing industries are investigated using two measures of industry-specific technological advantage, one absolute (innovations) and one relative (patents). It is demonstrated that the determining factors of UK manufacturing trade performance do include technological advantage. An all-manufacturing estimate of trade determination is derived which could be of use in forecasting, by pooling industry level data. However it is shown that using a single data panel makes it difficult to produce a statistically acceptable equation because the underlying industry parameters vary considerably across the panel. Separate technology sub-group estimates of the impact of innovation on net trade volumes are also derived which are more statistically acc...

Trade Performance and Innovatory Activity in Britain

The aim of the research discussed in this chapter is to study the implications of changes in patterns of international trade and the consequent changes in industrial structure for past and future employment in the UK. The main objective of the present chapter is to provide a critical review of the existing literature on the determinants of competitiveness and the link to innovative performance. The framework for the research and a major tool of analysis is provided by the Cambridge Econometrics Multisectoral Dynamic Macro-economic model, which emphasises the openness of the UK economy and the variability of its comparative advantage through time.