This paper reviews the achievements of the Labour Government’seducation policy between 1997 and 2001. Tony Blair claimed that hisGovernment would make education a priority. The first part of thepaper reviews the scale of education spending in relation to theeconomy at large and within the...

•Since 2000 Italy’s GDP growth has been below the Euro-area average, and total factor productivity growth has been very weak, and at times, negative (OECD, 2005)•The labour market is highly regulated and inflexible.•Italy has experienced high levels of immigration in recent years,...

This paper uses recently digitised samples of apprentices and masters in London and Bristol to quantify the practice of apprenticeship in the late 17th century. Apprenticeship appears much more fluid than is traditionally understood. Many apprentices did not complete their terms of indenture;...

This paper studies the way workers and firms behaved in a highly cyclical sector such as the cotton textile industry, which encompassed 1/5 of the Catalan industrial workforce in the early 20th century. Using firm level evidence from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the paper shows that,...