This paper examines the relationship between immigration and crime in a setting where large migration flows offer an opportunity to carefully appraise whether the populist view that immigrants cause crime is borne out by rigorous evidence. We consider possible crime effects from two large waves...

In this paper, we discuss the quest for more and more education and its implications for social mobility. We document very rapid educational upgrading in Britain over the last thirty years or so and show that this rise has featured faster increases in education acquisition by people from...

We show that controlling for subject of degree explains a significant part of the male/female gender wage differential amongst graduates. Using data from the labour force surveys of the United Kingdom and Germany, we find similar results in these two countries: subject of degree explains about...

Although there is a large literature on the economic effects of minimum wages on labour market outcomes (especially employment), there is hardly any evidence on their impact on firm performance. This is surprising: minimum wages appear to have a significant impact on wages, but only a limited...

In this paper, we evaluate the effect of the literacy hour in English primary schools on pupil attainment. The National Literacy Project (NLP) was undertaken in about 400 English primary schools in 1997 and 1998. We compare the reading and overall English attainment of children in NLP schools as...

Although there is a large literature on the economic effects of minimum wages on labour market outcomes (especially employment), there is much less evidence on their impact on firm performance. In this paper we consider a very under-studied area - the impact of minimum wages on firm...

Recent work on the economic effects of minimum wages has stressed that the standard economic model, where increases in minimum wages depress employment, is not supported by the empirical findings in some labour markets. In this paper we present a theoretical framework which is general enough to...