This paper discusses the extent to which migrants to Britain have been assimilated into the workforce. Migration into Britain has increased over the last 25 years, with a big increase in inflows in recent years. The paper shows that when a migrant worker first arrives they experience a pay gap...

This paper examines the extent to which the policies towards thewelfare state pursued by the Labour Government in its first fifteenmonths represent a break with those of its Conservativepredecessor and with earlier policies put forward by Labour inopposition. Four key parts of its inheritance...

The principal aim of Section F of the British Association is to show how economicanalysis can be applied to illuminate important issues of public concern. The themefor the 1997 Section F Meeting of “Equality and Opportunity” surely satisfied thiscriterion. The subject matter is highly...

[...]Our research on seven ‘weak marketcities’ in five European countriessupported by the Joseph RowntreeFoundation was completed and theresulting book, Phoenix Cities by AnnePower, Jörg Plöger and Astrid Winkler,will be published in March 2010.However, we were delighted that...

The paper explores the link between international economic integration and technological capability in colonial India. The example of iron industry shows that many new ideas and skills flowed into India from Europe, but not all met with commercial success. The essay suggests that in those fields...

This paper is a revised version of an Economic History thesis submitted to the London School of Economics in September 2000.The main text assumes analytical rather than chronological form, and, to avoid breaking the flow of the argument, it refers to persons, Labour Party structures and...

Economics has always had two connected faces in its Western tradition. In Adam Smith's eighteenth century, as in John Stuart Mill's nineteenth, these might be described as the science of political economy and the art of economic governance. The former aimed to describe the workings of the...

This paper examines changing patterns of labour relations innineteenth-century Brazil associated with the building of railways andexpansion of export agriculture. It addresses the 1850s-1880s period,decades when the `labour question' became a pressing issue forcontemporaries. The extinction of...

The analysis in the Report of the Pensions Commission (UK Pensions Commission2004, henceforth referred to as the Report), is sound, the data a wonderful treasure trove, thepresentation particularly clear, and the diagnosis correct. This comment takes the Report’sanalysis as given, and sets out...

Building on earlier work (Barr 2004a), this paper discusses the role of tuition fees in paying for teaching at universities in England, though much of the analysis applies also to the rest of the UK and to OECD countries. There is no discussion of financing research. The paper addresses three...