This paper examines the evidence that rapid upgrading of the skill structure in recent years was driven by technological change. Four countries are examined who have had different wage inequality and unemployment trends – Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The analysis...

Although there is a large literature on the economic effects of minimum wages on labour market outcomes (especially employment), there is hardly any evidence on their impact on firm performance. This is surprising: minimum wages appear to have a significant impact on wages, but only a limited...

In this paper we look at links between police resources and crime in a different way to the existing economics of crime work. To do so we focus on a large-scale policy intervention - the Street Crime Initiative - that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocated additional...

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job matches that have a sustained detrimental effect on their wages and career...

In this paper I document changes in the distribution of employment in the UK labour market in the 1980s. I use two longitudinal data sources, an industry-level panel data set between 1979 and 1990, and the panel component of the 1984 and 1990 establishment-level Workplace Industrial Relations...

This paper analyzes the life-cycle career costs associated with child rearing and decomposes their effects into unearned wages (as women drop out of the labor market), loss of human capital, and selection into more child-friendly occupations. We estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of fertility,...

We develop a dynamic discrete choice model of training choice, employment and wage growth, allowing for job mobility, in a world where wages depend on firm-worker matches, as well as experience and tenure and jobs take time to locate. We estimate this model on a large administrative panel data...

This paper uses two recent UK surveys to investigate labour market performance, the determinants of language proficiency, and the effect of language on earnings and employment probabilities of non-white immigrants. Our results show that language acquisition, employment probabilities, as well as...

This paper develops and estimates a human capital model of wage growth based on learning by doing. Learning by doing rates are assumed to be heterogeneous and firms offer different career structures in terms of the rate of acquisition of firm specific human capital. The model is estimated using...

This paper analyses the return intentions of migrant workers. An intertemporal model is developed where the point of return to the home country is endogenous. The analysis emphasizes three explanations of why it should be optimal to migrate only temporarily: differences in relative prices in the...