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 paper formulates a simple model of female labor force decisions which embeds an in-work benefit reform and explicitly allows for announcement and implementation effects. We explore several mechanisms through which women can respond to the announcement of a reform that increases in-work...

Unemployment varies substantially over time and across subgroups of the labour market. Worker flows among labour market states act as key determinants of this. We examine how the structure of unemployment across groups and its cyclical movements across time are shaped by changes in labour market...

A rise in population caused by increased immigration is sometimes accompanied by concerns that the increase in population puts additional or differential pressure on welfare services which might affect the net fiscal contribution of immigrants. The UK and Germany have experienced significant...

One potential channel through which the effects of the minimum wage could be directed is that firms who employ minimum wage workers could pass on any resulting higher labour costs in the form of higher prices. This study looks at the effects of the introduction and subsequent uprating of the...

This paper examines the effects of the Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC) on couples in Britain. We develop a simple model of household decisions which explicitly accounts for the role played by the tax and benefit system. Its main implications are then tested using panel data from the British...

This paper uses British panel data to investigate single women's labour supply changes in response to three tax and benefit policy reforms that occurred in the 1990s. These reforms changed individuals' work incentives and we use them to identify changes in labour supply. We find evidence of...

This paper formulates a model to examine the effects of changes in tax-benefit policy on the behavior of divorced parents and the well-being of children in single-parent households. Noncustodial parents choose the level of a child support payment to transfer to custodians. These, in turn, decide...

We estimate the effect of binge drinking on accident and emergency attendances, road accidents, arrests, and the number of police officers on duty using a variety of unique data from Britain and a two-sample minimum distance estimation procedure. Our estimates, which reveal sizeable effects of...

Using large longitudinal survey data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, this paper estimates the effect of maternal time inputs on early child development. We find that maternal time is a quantitatively important determinant of skill formation and that its effect declines with child age. There...