This paper presents a wage series for unskilled English women workers from 1260 to 1850 and compares it with existing evidence for men.  Our series cast light on long run trends in women's agency and wellbeing, revealing an intractable, indeed widening gap between women and men's remuneration...

One of the core goals of a universal health care system is to eliminate discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic status.  We test for discrimination using patient waiting times for non-emergency treatment in public hospitals.  Waiting time should reflect patients' clinical need with...

The Welsh economy has undergone rapid structural change in recent years. This paper uses data from the New Earnings Survey to examine how earnings in Wales changed relative to those of Great Britain between 1975 and 1994. There are five main findings. First, earnings of workers in Wales have...

I examine recent changes in labour markets and employment practices in Japan. I find little evidence that Japan is converging towards an Anglo-American type labour market. Mobility rates continue to be low, and there is little indication that this will change greatly in the future. Large firms...

Worksharing is considered by many as a promising public policy to reduce unemployment. In this paper we present a review of the most pertinent theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on worksharing. In addition, we also provide new empirical evidence on this issue, by a cross...

Demand for less skilled workers decreased dramatically in the US and in other developed countries over the past two decades. We argue that pervasive skill biased technological change rather than increased trade with the developing world is the principal culprit. The pervasiveness of this...

Greater labour market flexibility is often advocated as the solution to joblessness. Calls to weaken minimum wage provisions, to make out-of-work benefits less generous and to reduce legislative or bargained restrictions on hiring and firing have the common objective of encouraging those without...

Much of the dramatic change in skill and wage structure observed in recent years in the United States is believed to stem from the impact of new technology. This paper compares the changing skill strcuture of wage bills and employment in the United States with six other advanced developed...

This paper incorporates Nash bargaining, credible bargaining and efficiency wages as special cases of an over-arching model of wage determination in a matching model that is used to assess econometrically how well each fits US data.  With Nash bargaining, estimates for worker bargaining power...