Using incentive pay to improve public sector efficiency is an important component of the UK Government's public service modernisation agenda. In this paper, we review the important issues in performance pay in the public sector, and summarise the evidence on its effects. We consider how optimal...

Improving the performance of public sector is an important goal for the policy agenda in almost all industrialized countries. Public sector organisations are facing with the most demanding performance challenges in living memory. The recent comprehensive spending review reflected the poor state...

This paper examines the consequences of creating a fully competitive market in a sector previously dominated by a cost-minimizing public firm. Workers in the economy are heterogeneous in their intrinsic motivation to work in the sector. In line with empirical findings, our model implies that...

This paper explores the short-and long-term effects on wages of absence from work for young highly attached skilled male and female workers in West Germany. The analysis distinguishes different types of career absence: unemployment, maternity leave for female workers, compulsory service for male...

We investigate whether a causal interpretation of the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth is appropriate and whether cross-country evidence supports a case for the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking...

Having had little time to absorb the economic and social shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union is confronted with staggering increases in the cost of living. While household burdens vary significantly across and within countries, most European countries are struggling to cushion the...

As country after country in the European Union is called to respond to the current challenge of our time - high inflation and declining real wages - governments must engage in a transformative agenda and go beyond emergency energy vouchers and income support cashtransfers. And if the goal is to...

We examine the relationship between local public goods, prices, wages, and population in an equilibrium inter-city model. Non-traded production, federal taxes, and imperfect mobility all affect how public goods (or "amenities" more broadly) should be valued from data. Reinterpreting the...

Declining social and economic inequalities since the late 1990s coincided with several basic shifts in Latin America's political landscape, including an electoral turn to the left and a revival of social mobilization from below. These shifts helped to 'repoliticize' inequality and return...