This article investigates the extent and determinants of British identity among those living in Britain, a source of considerable contemporary angst. We find no evidence for a culture clash in general, and one connected with Muslims in particular. The vast majority of those born in Britain, of...

There is economic evidence that diversity has consequences for economic performance (see Alesina and La Ferrara, 2005). This might have consequences for immigration policy – how many immigrants to allow into a country and from what cultural background. But, central to such a discussion is the...

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigration, austerity, real wages and living standards, productivity and business,...

The main political parties disagree about the appropriate rate of income Tax on the highest incomes. This note lays out the economic principles surrounding the top rate of income tax and considers the evidence that high earners respond to higher tax rates by working less or by taking steps to...

This paper analyses the effect of a non-linear tax system on wage bargaining. The main conclusions are: an increase in the marginal income or payroll tax reduces the pre-tax wage; in the iso-elastic case, an increase in the average tax rate increases the pre-tax wage by more than the tax...

This paper argues that one cannot tell a convincing story of the rise in OECD unemployment without mentioning the slowdown in productivity and real wage growth that occurred in the 1970s. It is argued that whereas most authors have regarded any effects of the slowdown on unemployment as...

This paper uses a number of economic models to suggest ways in which the mandatory pre-strike ballots introduced in the UK Trade Union Act 1984 might be expected to affect union democracy, strike activity, wage and employment.

Since the abolition of the Wages Councils in September 1993, agriculture is the only sector in the UK economy covered by any form of minimum wage legislation. This paper investigates the impact of the system of minimum wages on the level and structure of earnings and employment in agriculture....

Debate about the effect of minimum wages on employment in the United Kingdom has not paid much attention to the impact of the existing system of minimum wages, the Wages Council. In this paper, we look at the consequences of the declining importance of the Wages Council in the 1980s for wage...