This paper analyses the welfare effects of changes in cross-sectional wage dispersion, using a class of tractable heterogeneous-agent economies. We emphasize a trade-off in the welfare calculation that arises when labour supply is endogenous. On the one hand, as wage uncertainty rises, so does...

We adopt a stochastic model of labor market turnover in order to analyze entries to and exits from paid employment by British lone mothers. We estimate the model using demographic and employment history data from the 1980 Women and Employment Survey. The theoretical model predicts that the exit...

An analysis of hourly pay that allows for the choice of whether to work full-time, part-time or not at all (using the 1980 Women in Employment Survey) finds significant sample selection bias for women in full-time jobs. Part of the observed differential between the hourly pay of full-timers and...

This Paper explores the implications of the recent sharp rise in US wage inequality for welfare and the cross-sectional distributions of hours worked, consumption and earnings. From 1967 to 1996 cross-sectional dispersion of earnings increased more than wage dispersion, due to a rise in the...

This paper develops an analytical framework to study consumption and labour supply in a rich class of heterogeneous-agent economies with partial insurance. The environment allows for trade in non-contingent and state-contingent bonds, for permanent and transitory idiosyncratic productivity...

Data on the life-cycle profiles of inequality in wages, earnings, hours worked and consumption contains precious information for answering questions about the ability of households to insure labor market risk and about the sources of this risk. This Paper demonstrates that the choice of whether...

This paper emphasises some of the outstanding issues on the agenda for research on the labour force in Britain. It surveys topics but not results and does not attempt to review the literature or current research. Human resources are defined as the potential for creating economic welfare through...

This paper examines the economic rationale for concern about the falling rate of growth of Europe's population. It also assembles demographic and economic time-series data for the countries of Eastern and Western Europe during the postwar period. The consequences of demographic developments for...