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This paper examines the determinants of gender differences in educational attainment using data for all graduates from universities in England and Wales in 1993. We find that although women students perform better on average than their male counterparts, controlling for a range of individual and institutional attributes, they are significantly less likely to obtain a first class degree. There is, however, no evidence that this arises either because of differences in the types of subjects male and female students study in the institutions they attend. Nor is there evidence that it reflects differences in personal attributes, such as academic ability. Rather it is differences in the way these factors affect academic achievement that give rise to gender differences in performance. In addition, although evidence is found of subjectspecific effects, there is no support for the idea that women under-perform in male dominated subject areas.

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The determinants of students' propensity to drop out of university are analysed using individual records of all students passing through the central applications process in 1993. The data set comprises about 100,000 individuals and allows a much more thorough analysis of student wastage than has been possible in the past. The main reasons for attrition, academic failure ('involuntary' attrition) and 'voluntary' dropout, are modelled. The results highlight, inter alia, the importance of matching and peer group effects, both of which have been found to be important determinants of student outcomes in the US but which have been subject to little empirical scrutiny for the UK.

In recent years, considerable attention has been given to the impact of various forms of financial participation on financial performance. However, financial participation is only one of a number of different schemes attempting to elicit better performance and is itself heterogeneous. Moreover, financial participation schemes are typically introduced in conjunction with employee involvement schemes and their combined effect can be very different from their individual contributions. Indeed, concentrating on only one type of participation can seriously distort its relationship with financial performance. In this paper, a range of different employee participation schemes is examined, including two types of financial participation. The results indicate that financial participation has important interaction effects with particular types of employee involvement scheme and that the two main types of financial participation scheme have negative interactions. Furthermore, some employee involvement schemes are found to have a lower or even negative relationship with financial performance when introduced in isolation.

subjective measure but, in addition, objective data on profitability and productivity were also collected. This allows a comparison to be made between the two types of measures. A number of validity tests are undertaken and the main conclusion is that subjective and objective measures of performance are weakly equivalent but that differences are also evident. Our findings suggest that it would be prudent to give most weight to results supported by both types of measure.

Using an under-utilised dataset on consumer and business confidence indicators across the UK, France, Italy and the Netherlands, this paper considers the extent to which such indicators are linked to GDP and the business cycle. We adopt, cross correlation descriptive statistics, Granger causality tests, variance decomposition, and forecast probit tests to investigate the properties of the data. In general consumer and business confidence indicators are leading indicators and pro-cyclical. There is some evidence of causality between the indicators and GDP and confidence indicators would appear to have good predictive power of cycle turning points in relation to other leading indicators.

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