It has been suggested in the literature that taxes and subsidies play an important role in explaining the differences in working hours across countries. In this paper I test whether public programmes for family support play a role in explaining this variation. I analyse two types of policies:...

In this paper we present a microsimulation model to calculate the effects of hypothetical ex-ante price changes in the Spanish energy domain. The model rests on our prior estimation of a demand system which is especially designed for simultaneous analysis of different energy goods and uses...

This paper shows that cities made more compact by transportation taxation are more robust than spread-out cities to shocks in transportation costs. Such a shock, indeed, entails negative transition effects that are caused by housing infrastructure inertia and are magnified in low-density cities....

This paper emphasizes the two-way causality between the provision of unemployment insurance and the cultural transmission of work ethic. Values affect the size of the moral-hazard problem and, hence, the policy to be implemented. Conversely, when parents rationally choose how much effort to...

With increasing globalisation of knowledge, there are increased opportunities to 'learn' from the experience of policy interventions elsewhere. This paper presents evidence on the extent of international convergence in public policy, with particular focus on labour, welfare, savings and...

Women working part-time in the UK have hourly earnings that are on average 26 percent less than women working fulltime. Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo investigate what's behind this part-time pay penalty.

Planning is about other things as well, but it is fundamentally an economic activity. It allocates a scarce resource but independently of prices or any market information. In analysing the effects this allocative mechanism has on housing supply (or, indeed, the supply of buildings for any given...

In 2003, women working part-time in the UK earned, on average, 22% less than women working full-time. Compared to women who work FT, PT women are more likely to have low levels of education, to be in a couple, to have young and numerous children, to work in small establishments in distribution,...

We examine the allocation of hours of work across industrial sectors in OECD countries. We find large disparities across three sector groups, one that produces goods without home substitutes, and two others that have home substitutes but are treated differently by welfare policy. We attribute...

Provided there are positive external benefits attached to the historic character of buildings, owners of properties in designated conservation areas benefit from a reduction in uncertainty regarding the future of their area. At the same time, the restrictions put in place to ensure the...