We analyze the optimal regional pattern of public employment in an information-constrained second-best redistribution policy showing that regionally differentiated public employment can serve as an expenditure side tagging device, bypassing or relaxing the equity-efficiency trade-off. The...

This paper studies how the strength of social ties are affected by the geographical location of other individuals and their social capital. We characterize the equilibrium in terms of both social interactions and social capital. We show that lower travel costs increase not only the interaction...

We study the response of real wages to the business cycle in eight major Eurozone countries before and during the Great Recession. Average real wages are found to be acyclical, but this reflects, in large part, the effect of changes in the composition of the labour force related to unemployment...

This paper analyses the relationship between CPI and real GDP in both the US and the UK using fractional integration and long-range dependence techniques. All series appear to be highly trended and to exhibit high degrees of integration and persistence, especially in the case of CPI. Since the...

The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has had disruptive effects on international trade. As part of its ‘Global Britain’ strategy, in the wake of Brexit, the UK is pursuing a series of Free Trade Agreements with countries around the world, including Canada, Japan,...

This paper examines the relationship between product demand and the pattern of rising skill premia and rising employment of skilled workers in the US and the UK since the 1980s. If more skilled workers demand more skill-intensive goods, then an increase in relative skill supply will also induce...

In this paper we show that panel estimates of tenure specific sensitivity to the business cycle of wages is subject to serious pitfalls. Three canonical variates used in the literature – the minimum unemployment rate during a worker's time at the firm (min u), the unemployment rate at the...