We study the impact of Chinese import competition in the 2000s on workers and their households in England and Wales. We document both the direct employment changes of individuals affected by trade exposure, as well as the employment response of individuals whose partner is exposed to trade. We...

We use large-scale panel data from linked decadal censuses in England and Wales to study the responses of both individuals and their partners to rising Chinese import competition in the 2000s. We test whether partners provide insurance against lost household earnings by increasing labour supply....

In this article we review recent evidence showing how market forces and policies shape the rate and direction of innovation, with various implications for inequality. First, we characterize several market mechanisms whereby higher rates of innovation lead to higher inequality. Second, we...

We review the effects on the Covid-19 pandemic on inequalities in education, the labour market, household living standards, mental health, and wealth in the UK. The pandemic has pushed up inequalities on several dimensions. School closures particular disrupted the learning of poorer children,...

Roughly one third of a cohort drop out of high school across OECD countries, and developing effective tools to address prime-aged high school dropouts is a key policy question. We leverage high quality Norwegian register data, and for identification we exploit reforms enabling access to high...

We consider the life cycle choices of a household deciding how much to consume and how to allocate spouses time to work, leisure, and childcare. In an environment with uncertainty, the allocation of goods and time over the life cycle also serves the purpose of smoothing marginal utility in...

Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to investigate the importance of social skills, in particular team-work and communication with co-workers, as a driver of wage growth for workers with lower formal education. We find that in social skills tasks, workers enjoy greater wage...

We estimate the distribution of life cycle wages for cohorts of prime-age men and women in the US. A quantile selection model is used to consistently recover the full distribution of wages accounting for systematic differences in employment, permitting us to construct gender- and...

We use matched employee-employer data from the UK to highlight the importance of social skills, including the ability to work well in a team and communicate effectively with co-workers, as a driver for individual wage growth for workers with few formal educational qualifications. We show that...

In the U.S, after age 65, households face income and health risks and a large fraction of these risks are transitory. While consumption significantly responds to transitory income shocks, out-of-pocket medical expenses do not. In contrast, both consumption and out-of-pocket medical expenses...