There is an apparent inconsistency in the existing literature on graduate employment in the UK. While analyses of rates of return to graduates or graduate mark-ups show high returns, suggesting that demand has kept up with a rapidly rising supply of graduates, the literature on over-education...

Ljungqvist and Sargent (2017) (LS) show that unemployment fluctuations can be understood in terms of a quantity they call the "fundamental surplus." However, their analysis ignores risk premia, a force that Hall (2017) shows is important in understanding unemployment fluctuations. We show how...

In a meritocratic society an individual's economic success is determined by their ability, not by their parents' socio-economic status. We assess whether meritocracy has increased in both the British education system and labour market. The richness of our longitudinal data enables us to look at...

With the rapid increase in educational attainment, technological change, and greater job specialization, decisions regarding human capital investment are no longer exclusively about the quantity of education, but rather the type of education to obtain. The skills and knowledge acquired in...

We use household panel data to explore the wage returns associated with training incidence and intensity (duration) for British employees. We find these returns differ depending on the nature of the training; who funds the training; the skill levels of the recipient (white or blue collar); the...