This paper examines the effect of a new technology on a labour-intensive service. Comparing primal and dual TFP-growth with final-year social savings, we find that, between 1900 and 1938, motion pictures increased entertainment output (measured in spectator-hours) by at least nine percent...

This paper examines patterns of structural change and labour productivity growth in the late nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire. Using shift-share analysis and a set of basic measures to account for the contribution of physical and human capital growth, it seeks to address three questions:...

The travel of small facts (such as data) across geographicallocations and disciplines is increasingly regulated by the private andpublic sponsors of digital databases. My analysis focuses on thecontrast between the strategies supported by the public and privatesectors in governing bioinformatic...

Gaps in welfare attainment between boys and girls in China have attractedinternational attention. In this paper demand analysis is used to try and uncoverthe factors which may be driving the emergence of these gender gaps.Drawing on household expenditure data from a poor (Sichuan) and rich...

This paper discusses the impact of growing joblessness and dwindling workopportunities on inner-city areas in America. The lack of low-skilled manualwork in the inner city is linked to poverty, crime, family dissolution and thesocial life of neighbourhoods. The paper discusses this impact at...

At the end of 2008, the Government set in motion a Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England chaired by Sir Michael Marmot. It is to report in December 2009. As part of its work, it set up various Task Groups to collect evidence and suggest policy options. The Task Group on Social...

It has long been accepted that lack of social participation in wider society is oneaspect or one definition of poverty. Current concerns with the extent anddistribution of social capital as both a measure of a good society and as meansto upward mobility also emphasise the importance of social...