Using a randomized field experiment, we show that health care specialists cream-skim patients by their expected profitability. In the German two-tier system, outpatient reimbursement rates for both public and private insurance are centrally determined but are more than twice as high for the...

In England as elsewhere, policy makers are trying to reduce the pressure on costs due to rising hospital admissions by encouraging GPs to refer fewer patients to hospital specialists. This could have an impact on elective treatment levels, particularly procedures for conditions which are not...

This study estimates the impact of financial deregulation on top income shares. Using the novel econometric method of constructing synthetic control groups, we show that the "Big Bang"-deregulations in the United Kingdom in 1986 and Japan 1997-1999 increased the share of pre-tax incomes going to...

This paper studies the causal effect of English proficiency on residential location outcomes and the socioeconomic class of immigrants in England and Wales, exploiting a natural experiment. Based on the phenomenon that young children learn a new language more easily than older children, we...

In this paper, we discuss the quest for more and more education and its implications for social mobility. We document very rapid educational upgrading in Britain over the last thirty years or so and show that this rise has featured faster increases in education acquisition by people from...

In a number of high-income countries over the past few decades there has been a large growth in income inequality and at the same time a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. This paper applies the theory of optimal piecewise linear taxation to...

This paper assesses the impact of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) on employment and inequality in the UK over the decade since its introduction in 1999. Identification is facilitated by using variation in the bite of the NMW across local labour markets and the different sized year on year up...

This study of the emergence of inequality during the early years is based upon a comparative analysis of children at the age of about five years in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. We study a series of child outcomes related to readiness to learn, focusing on...

We develop a new approach to the decomposition of income risk within a nonstationary model of intertemporal choice. The approach allows for changes in income risk over the life-cycle and with the business cycle. It requires only repeated cross-section data and can allow for mixtures of...