The labor supply decisions of nurses in Great Britain

This thesis examines the nursing labor market in Great Britain. It describes the components of supply and demand, their interaction, and the dominant role of supply in the market. It also gives a detailed accounting of the conditions of employment for nurses, their training arrangements, and the system by which their pay is determined. Following this discussion, two types of supply models are estimated. The first is a static model which uses data from the Women and Employment Survey to explain two dimensions of supply at a particular point in time: participation and hours of work; discontinuities in the supply function are also discussed. The second is a dynamic model which uses hazard functions to identify the determinants of nursing quits over time. Work history data collected from the personnel files of the John Radcliffe Hospital are the basis of this analysis and three specific quit models: to leave for another job, to leave the labor market altogether, and to leave to take up training, are estimated along with the aggregate quit function for qualified and unqualified nurses. Finally, the elasticities produced from the supply models are used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of various policies to increase the supply of nurse labor.