Work of low-skilled migrant workers from developing countries in developed economies is a growingphenomenon and a key political and economic issue. An extensive literature has found (for the mostpart) that these workers come from the lower part of the skill distribution. This paper revisits...

We survey the microfoundations, empirical evidence and estimation issues underlying the aggregate matching function. Several microeconomic matching mechanisms have been suggested in the literature with some successes but none is generally accepted as superior to all others. Instead, an aggregate...

Immigration to the UK has risen in the past 10 years and has had a measurable effect on the supply of different types of labour. But, existing studies of the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers in the UK (e.g. Dustmann, Fabbri and Preston, 2005) have failed to find any...

One potential channel through which the effects of the minimum wage could be directed is that firms who employ minimum wage workers could have passed on any higher labour costs resulting from the minimum wage in the form of higher prices. This study looks at the effects of the minimum wage on...

This paper summarizes inequalities in PC ownership using data from the US Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) and the British General Household Survey (GHS) for the period 1984-98. Between 1988 and 1994, British households were more likely than US households to own a personal computer (PC). After...

In this paper we study the contribution of inflows and outflows to the dynamics of unemployment in three European countries, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. We compare performance in these three countries making use of both administrative and labor force survey data. We find that the...

This paper examines the importance of social and geographical networks in structuring entry into skilled occupations in premodern London. Using newly digitised records of those beginning an apprenticeship in London between 1600 and 1749, we find little evidence that networks strongly shaped...

This paper studies the responses of unemployment in Germany, the United States and Britain to the Great Recession of 2008-09 by making use of Beveridge curve analysis, and in the entire OECD with other techniques. It is shown that Britain suffered from recession but no structural problems; the...

Using a longitudinal data of British youths, this paper explores the consequences of past parental unemployment on the current happiness and self-esteem of the children. We find that a past unemployment spell of the father has important consequences for their children and leads to them having...

Unemployment varies substantially over time and across subgroups of the labour market. Worker flows among labour market states act as key determinants of this variation. We examine how the structure of unemployment across groups and its cyclical movements across time are shaped by changes in...