The large increase in computer use has raised the question whether people have to be taught computer skills before entering the labour market. Using data from the 1997 Skills Survey of the Employed British Workforce, we argue that neither the increase in computer use nor the fact that...

Since the late 1970s, wage inequality has increased strongly both in the U.S. and Germany but the trends have been different. Wage inequality increased along the entire wage distribution during the 1980s in the U.S. and since the mid 1990s in Germany. There is evidence for wage polarization in...

The economics profession has made considerable progress in understanding the increase in wage inequality in the U.S. and the UK over the past several decades, but currently lacks a consensus on why inequality did not increase, or increased much less, in (continental) Europe over the same time...

Nearly 75 years ago, John Hicks introduced and formalized the concept of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour and its relation to derived demand. The resulting formula has proven very useful in understanding the derived demand for productive factors, the distribution of...

Using a panel of UK firms spanning three decades, we provide estimates of the long-run elasticity of substitution between capital and other factors of production, the (negative of the) elasticity of capital and investment with respect to the user cost. The parameter is estimated using 'time...

This article considers whether African utility regulators can draw useful lessons from the British experience over the past thirty years. We focus on three features that are considered key properties of the British regulatory model: price-cap incentive regulation, independent regulatory agencies...

A shortage of medical personnel has become a critical problem for developing countries attempting to expand the provision of medical services for the poor. In order to highlight the driving forces determining the international allocation of medical personnel, the cases of four countries, namely...

This paper reports estimates of the UK “college premium” for young graduates across successive cohorts from large cross section datasets for the UK pooled from 1994 to 2006 - a period when the higher education participation rate increased dramatically. This implies that graduate supply...