Bowden, Sue, Higgins, David and Price, Christopher (2006) A Very Peculiar Practice: Underemployment in Britain During the Interwar Years. European Review of Economic History, 10 (1). pp. 89-108.

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Abstract

This article presents new evidence on the determinants of short-time working in Britain during the interwar period. Using a selection of manufacturing industries we test the impact that output volatility, the benefit-wage ratio, and trade union density had on short-time working. We find that persistence effects (captured by lagged values of output fluctuation) and gender differences in trade union density were important for a number of industries. However, perhaps our most interesting finding is that the benefit-wage ratio also exercised a statistically significant impact on short-time working. This suggests that the Benjamin-Kochin thesis may be important after all. In other words, the army of short-time workers that existed in Britain between the Wars may, indeed, have been a 'volunteer army'

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	10.1017/S1361491605001590
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/7703

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