Since 1979 productivity growth in Britain has improved markedly compared with Europe. The turnaround in productivity growth has two main causes. The British economy was subjected to a far more severe contraction of demand in 1980-81 than any other country. This led to a new realism, which was...

This paper attempts to assess the relative importance of firm-specific factors (i.e., insider forces) in wage determination. Using firm-level data on 219 UK companies over the period 1974-82, it finds that a 1% rise in a firm's prices or productivity relative to the aggregate economy leads to a...

A key feature of OECD economic growth since the early 1970s has been the secular decline in manufacturing’s share of GDP and the secular rise of service sectors. This Paper examines the role played by relative prices, technology, factor endowments and labour market institutions in the process...

The view that the stock market is myopic is commonly expressed in the financial press. However, the existing econometric evidence does not support this view. In this paper, we report econometric evidence suggesting that the market attaches too high a weight to current dividends relative to...

This paper derives and then estimates a model of employment where unions and firms bargain over wages and possibly employment, and efficiency wage considerations may be important. It illustrates the difficulties involved in interpreting many existing attempts to discriminate between alternative...