Estimates are produced for differences between the ceteris paribus earnings of union and non-union workers in the UK and the US over time.

Many observers believe that times are growing harder for young people in Western society. This paper looks at the evidence and finds that conventional wisdom appears to be wrong.

This paper analyses the impact of cost competitiveness and technology on export performance using a very rich panel datset of 12 manufacturing industries in 14 OECD countries for the period between 1970 and 1992.

If a nation's economic performance improves, how much extra happiness does that buy its citizens? Most public debate assume -without real evidence- that the answer is a lot. This paper examines the question by using information on the well-being in Western countries.

A large literature in macroeconomics assumes a social objective function, W(pi,U), where inflation, pi, and unemployment, U, are bads. This paper provides some of the first formal evidence for such an approach. It issues data on the reported well-being levels of approximately one quarter of a...

The paper attempts to synthesize the research to date on the contribution of international trade to rising income inequality in the US and to other labour-market developments in other countries. Our basic conclusion is that despite using very different methodologies, on balance most labour and...

Demand for less skilled workers decreased dramatically in the US and in other developed countries over the past two decades. We argue that pervasive skill biased technological change rather than increased trade with the developing world is the principal culprit. The pervasiveness of this...

This paper is concerned with the nature of economic growth in 19 manufacturing industries between 1970-92. There is substantial heterogeneity (both across sectors and time) in rates of growth of value-added, hours worked, labour productivity and Total Factor Productivity during the sample...

The instability of the Beveridge curve in Britain since the mid-50s has been interpreted as revealing a deterioration of labour market effectiveness in matching vacancies to unemployed job-seekers. This paper attemps to repeat the stability analysis of the matching technology, having relaxed...

A search for key sectors in the UK economy is undertaken, in terms of those generating labour cost saving and product improvements, the effect from which spill over into the remainder of the economy.