Using the accurate and extensive data available in the UK New Earnings Survey, this paper investigates the extent to which nominal wages are downwardly rigid and whether such rigidity interferes with necessary real wage adjustments when inflation is low. Despite the substantial numbers of...

Following the fall in overall net public investment, the relative pay of most public sector workers in the United Kingdom declined sharply after the mid-1970s. For example, the relative pay of male teachers fell by over 10 percentage points from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. So has this...

This paper considers three aspects of the job insecurity facing British men in the last two decades. The probability of becoming unemployed, the costs of unemployment in terms of real wage losses and the probability that the continuously employed will experience substantial real wage losses. The...