Workers have responded differently to declining union density in the US and UK. US workers have unfilled demand for unions whereas many UK workers free-ride at unionized workplaces. To explain this difference, we create a scalar measure of worker needs for representation and relate desire for...

Unemployment is notoriously difficult to predict. In previous studies, once country and year fixed effects are added to panel estimates, few variables predict changes in unemployment rates. Using panel data for 29 European countries collected by the European Commission over 444 months between...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...

Following the report of the Stiglitz Commission, measuring and comparing well-being across countries has gained renewed interest. Yet, analyses that go beyond income and incorporate non-market dimensions of welfare most often rely on the assumption of identical preferences to avoid the...

We suggest the first large-scale international comparison of labor supply elasticities for 17 European countries and the US, separately by gender and marital status. Measurement differences are netted out by using a harmonized empirical approach and comparable data sources. We find that own-wage...

Across Europe, there are many differing opinions on whether workplace employee representation should be encouraged or discouraged. Yet there is very little evidence on the variations in workplace employee representation across Europe or the reasons for this. We use a workplace survey covering 27...

Using data across countries and over time we show that women are unhappier than men in unhappiness and negative affect equations, irrespective of the measure used - anxiety, depression, fearfulness, sadness, loneliness, anger - and they have more days with bad mental health and more restless...

Across many studies subjective well-being follows a U-shape in age, declining until people reach middle-age, only to rebound subsequently. Ill-being follows a mirror-imaged hump-shape. But this empirical regularity has been replaced by a monotonic decrease in illbeing by age. The reason for the...

Using nationally representative workplace data we find substantial use of high-performance work systems (HPWS) in Britain's small enterprises. We find empirical support for the proposition that HPWS have a non-linear association with employees' overall job attitude, with a positive association...