This paper uses data on 9 year old Irish children to examine the determinants of mathematical achievement among young children. We find that boys perform better in maths than girls and that this gender gap is driven by differences at the top of the achievement distribution. While there is no...

There is considerable debate about the role of wage rigidity in explaining unemployment. Despite a large body of empirical work, no consensus has emerged on the extent of wage rigidity. Previous attempts to empirically examine wage rigidity have been hampered by small samples and measurement...

This note describes and illustrates a new Stata program, gmmcovearn, that estimates the covariance structure of earnings for a variety of models using the GMM estimator. The program estimates models that incorporate time factor loadings and cohort factor loadings on both the transitory and...

This paper examines the determinants of mathematical achievement among primary school children. Previous studies have found that boys perform better in maths than girls, particularly at the upper end of the distribution. It has been suggested in the literature that differences in the size of the...

There is considerable debate about the role of wage rigidity in explaining unemployment. Despite a large body of empirical work, no consensus has emerged on the extent of wage rigidity. Previous attempts to empirically examine wage rigidity have been hampered by small samples and measurement...

Much has been written about the relationship between economic growth and aggregate inequality in recent years. In this paper we extend this literature by examining whether economic growth affects, not the level, but rather the nature of inequality. To do this we focus on the Irish economy which...

Reliable measures of obesity are essential in order to develop effective policies to tackle the costs of obesity. We examine what, if anything, we can learn about obesity rates using self-reported BMI once we allow for possible measurement error. Existing approaches that correct for...

This paper uses data on both self-reported and true measures of individual Body Mass Index (BMI) to examine the nature of measurement error in self-reported BMI and to look at the consequences of using self-reported measures when estimating the effect of BMI on economic outcomes. In keeping with...

Recent papers have examined the intergenerational transmission of well-being by looking at the relationship between parents' and children's income. However, by concentrating on those who are working these studies exclude some of the very poorest in society, the unemployed. In this paper, the...