This paper compares trends in male and female hourly wage inequality in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1979 and 1998. Our main finding is that the extent and pattern of wage inequality became increasingly similar in the two countries during this period. We attribute this...

Most governments are mandated to maintain their economies at full employment. We propose that the best marker of full employment is the efficient unemployment rate, u*. We define u* as the unemployment rate that minimizes the nonproductive use of labor--both jobseeking and recruiting. The...

In this paper we evaluate the success of policies that were implemented in the 1980s that were designed to improve the workings of the UK labour market. Our primary conclusion is that the Thatcherite reforms succeeded in their goals of weakening union power; may have marginally increased...

The British New Deal for Young People began in January 1998. After 6 months of unemployment, 18-24 year olds are mandated to enter a `Gateway' period where they are given extensive job search assistance. If they are unable to obtain an unsubsidised job, then they can enter one of four New Deal...

Over the past three decades, a large amount of research has attempted to identify the determinants of the natural rate of unemployment. It is this body of work we assess in this paper. We reach two main conclusions. First, there has been considerable theoretical progress over the past 30 years....

This paper begins by identifying nominal price stickiness as the logical basis for the Keynesian or activist point of view concerning demand management policy. It then characterizes two alternative approaches to policy analysis that have been adopted by adherents of the Keynesian position, the...

This paper has three goals; first, to place U.S. job growth in international perspective by exploring cross-country differences in employment and population growth. This section finds that the U.S. has managed to absorb added workers -- especially female workers -- into employment at a greater...

I develop a model with the path of labor-market outcomes exhibiting hysteresis depending on prior labor-market policy. The results suggest that attempts to transfer policies across economies lead to surprising results even if current economic outcomes in the countries appear similar. Examples of...

We study the labor markets in China and the United States, the two largest economies in the world, by examining the evolution of their cross-sectional age-earnings profiles during the past thirty years. We find that, first, the peak age in the cross-sectional age-earnings profiles, which we...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) increased US unemployment benefits by $600 a week. Theory predicts that FPUC will decrease job applications, and could decrease vacancy creation. We estimate the effect of FPUC on job applications and vacancy...