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...

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...

Many studies show that motherhood has substantial impacts on women's wages and earnings, but there is less evidence on the effect of the timing of entry into motherhood, particularly over the long term and from contexts other than the US. We analyse a sample of women who became mothers by age 30...

Using North American data, we revisit the question first broached by Krueger (1993) and reexamined by DiNardo and Pischke (1997) of whether there exists a real wage differential associated with computer use. Employing a mixed effects model to correct for both worker and workplace unobserved...

This paper tests two major competing theories explaining the spatial concentration of economic activity, namely new economic geography theory (NEG) which emphasizes varying market potential, and urban economics theory (UE) in which the main emphasis is on producer service linkages. Using wage...

I study when a firm prefers to be transparent about pay using a simple multidimensional signalling model. Pay transparency within the firm means that a worker can learn about their own productivity from another worker's pay. This can either encourage or discourage workers—which affects...