We use detailed cohort data from three surveys of graduates to examine two explanations for the large decline in the male-female wage gap that occurred in the United Kingdom during the early 1970s. The first attributes the fall to gender-specific factors, most notably the introduction of...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In this paper we use a semi-parmaetric procedure developed by DiNardo et al(1996),to examine the distribution of the racial wage gap in the U.S and to examine the extent to which forces underlying this wage gap vary throughout the distribution. In carrying out our analyses, we focus on recent...

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...

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...