The increase in the real wages of British workers over the last one hundred years is often attributed to the growth in labour productivity, but this has rarely been confirmed. In the research reported here, this ascription is confronted with annual observations on wages and productivity spanning...

How are wages set in an open economy? What role is played by demand pressure, international competition, and structural factors in the labour market? How important is nominal wage rigidity and exchange rate policy for the evolution of real wages and competitiveness? To answer these questions, we...