How should the productivity of research universities be measured? This task is difficult but important. The recent Research Excellence Framework in the UK, which was based on peer review, suggests that there has been a marked improvement in UK academic research in economics and in many other...

This paper analyses the relationship between training, job satisfaction and workplace performance using the British 2004 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). Several measures of performance are analysed including absence, quits, financial performance, labour productivity and product...

The recession of 2008-2009 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the other post-war recessions. Nevertheless, employment rates remained higher than might have been expected given the experience of previous recessions. The main reasons for this appear to be a combination of...

This paper assesses the impact of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) on employment and inequality in the UK over the decade since its introduction in 1999. Identification is facilitated by using variation in the bite of the NMW across local labour markets and the different sized year on year up...

This paper uses propensity score matching methods to investigate the relationship between breastfeeding and children's cognitive and noncognitive development. We find that breastfeeding for four weeks is positively and statistically significantly associated with higher cognitive test scores, by...

How should the productivity of research universities be measured? This task is difficult but important. The recent Research Excellence Framework in the UK, which was based on peer review, suggests that there has been a marked improvement in UK academic research in economics and in many other...

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...

Country-specific factors, such as the wage setting environment, are important determinants in explaining the relative size of the gender wage gap. This paper uses British and Canadian linked employer-employee data to investigate the importance of the workplace for the gender wage gap. Our main...

An important policy issue is whether the National Minimum Wage (NMW) introduced in Britain in April 1999, is a stepping stone to higher wages or traps workers in a low-wage no-wage cycle. In this paper we utilise the longitudinal element of the Labour Force Survey over the period 1999 to 2003 to...

This paper assesses the impact of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) on employment and inequality in the UK over the decade since its introduction in 1999. Identification is facilitated by using variation in the bite of the NMW across local labour markets and the different sized year on year up...