[Preface ...] In this book, we examine how the public finances, and the plans for fiscal consolidation, have evolved during this parliament. We set out what has happened to the pay of different groups, and assess the current direction of travel as real earnings growth slowly returns. We consider...

There have been dramatic changes in the patterns of work among people in their 50s and 60s over the last 50 years. The gradual increases in employment since the mid-1990s are generally welcome. A longer working life boosts household incomes, as people are reliant on their wages and salaries for...

Recent years have seen increasing concerns in many developed countries over 'the changing nature of work'. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Taylor Review notes that only 60% of workers are permanent employees. In the United States, a recent review by Mas and Pallais (2020) found that...

We link a new UK management survey covering 8,000 firms to panel data on productivity in manufacturing and services. There is a large variation in management practices, which are highly correlated with productivity, profitability and size. Uniquely, the survey collects firms' micro forecasts of...

We use a major new survey of UK firms, the Decision Maker Panel, to assess the impact of the June 2016 Brexit referendum. We identify three key results. First, the UK's decision to leave the EU has generated a large, broad and long-lasting increase in uncertainty. Second, anticipation of Brexit...

We describe the history of state pension policy in the UK since 1948 and calculate summary measures of the generosity of the system over time and the degree to which the it created implicit taxes on, or subsidies to, work at older ages. The time series of these measures, calculated separately...

We consider several economic uncertainty indicators for the US and UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: implied stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic policy uncertainty, twitter chatter about economic uncertainty, subjective uncertainty about future business growth, and...