This paper examines alternative approaches to wage subsidy programmes. It does this in the context of a recent active labour market reform for the young unemployed in Britain. This “New Deal” reform and the characteristics of the target group are examined in detail. We discuss theoretical...

Over half a million men of working age left the labour market over the course of the 1990s. In this paper this remarkable decline is explored, and the roles played by the interaction of skills, long-term sickness and the disability benefit system are highlighted. The analysis shows that the...

Does it matter whether you work for a successful company? And if so, does it matter who you are? To answer these questions we construct a unique panel dataset covering the pay of all CEOs, senior managers and a fully representative sample of workers for a large group of publicly-listed companies...

The pay of financial sector workers ("bankers") is a focus of public concern especially since the onset of the financial crisis. We document the remarkable rise in the share of aggregate pay going to those at the very top of the distribution over the last decade in the UK and highlight the role...

We provide new evidence on the growth in pay at the very top of the wage distribution in the UK. Sectoral decompositions show that workers in the financial sector have accounted for the majority of the gains at the top over the last decade. New results are also presented on the pay of CEOs in...

It is well known that the distribution of income in the United Kingdom has widened considerably in the last three decades. This rise has been a result of a widening at both the top and bottom of the wage distribution. More recently, most of the action appears to have occurred at the top of the...