Labor market integration raises welfare in the absence of distortions. This paper examines labor and goods market integration in a general equilibrium model with social capital. The findings are: i) labor market integration has an ambiguous impact on welfare, and raises it if the goods produced...

In this paper we use individual micro data on workers combined with industry and regional data to study the dynamics of the wage differential between skilled and unskilled workers in Italy in the period 1991-1996. Being different to previous empirical studies, our data allow us to explore in a...

There is a well-established high quality literature on the role of networks, particularly ethnic networks, in international trade. Ethnic networks are a way of overcoming informal barriers (information costs, risk and uncertainty) to trade by building trust and substituting for the difficulty of...

This paper examines the welfare implications associated with different degrees of diversity or similarity between migrants and natives under both migration and trade. We use a general equilibrium model of migration, human capital and social capital and find that there are three equilibrium...

Using data on annual individual labor income from three representative panel datasets (German SOEP, British BHPS, Australian HILDA) we investigate a) the selectivity of item non-response (INR) and b) the impact of imputation as a prominent post-survey means to cope with this type of measurement...

This paper analyses the contribution of capital income to income inequality in a cross-national comparison. Using micro-data from the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) for three prominent panel studies, namely the BHPS for Great Britain, the SOEP for West Germany, and the PSID for the USA, a...

One of the famous questions in social science is whether money makes people happy. We offer new evidence by using longitudinal data on a random sample of Britons who receive medium-sized lottery wins of between £1000 and £120,000 (that is, up to approximately U.S. $200,000). When compared to...

Based on a unique composite dataset measuring heterogeneous sports participation, labour market outcomes and local facilities provision, this paper examines for the first time the association between different types of sports participation on employment and earnings in England. Clear...

The UK and the US have experienced both rising skill premia and rising employment of skilled workers since the 1980s. These trends are typically interpreted as concurrent shifts of relative skill supplies and demands, and the demand shifts are attributed to skill-biased technological change or...

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey from 1991 to 1996, the authors investigate the impact of union coverage on work-related training and how the union-training link affects wages and wage growth for a sample of full-time men. Relative to uncovered workers, union-covered men are...