Overall, collective bargaining coverage has dropped by around fourteen percentage points. This paper investigates the causes and consequences of the decline in collective bargaining in Britain between 1990 and 1998. One in three workplaces that practiced collective bargaining in 1990 had...

This paper brings together data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, National Survey of Unions and TUC focus on recognition survey to investigate influences on union organising effectiveness. Organising effectiveness is defined as the ability of trade unions to recruit and retain...

The introduction of a statutory recognition procedure offers British unions the opportunity to reverse membership decline by organising non-union workers. The aim of this paper is to test theories of individual union joining in order to assess the likely impact of the new procedure on British...

Dispersion in pay is lower among union members than among non-unionists. This reflects two factors. First, union members and jobs are more homogeneous than their non-union counterparts. Second, union wage policies within and across firms lower pay dispersion. Unions' minimum wage targets also...

Optimal production decisions depend on local market characteristics. This paper develops a model to explain firm labor demand and firm density across regions. Firms vary in their technology to combine imperfectly substitutable worker types, and locate across regions with distinct distributions...

We use non-random sorting into interethnic marriage and salient differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of Sephardic affiliation on wages. Using the 1995 Israeli Census, we estimate the effect of a Sephardic affiliation on wages. We first compare the...

David Metcalf, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), outlines recent changes in the regulatory framework for immigrant workers.

Women have, on average, been less well-paid than men throughout history. Prior to 1900, most economic historians see the gender wage gap as a reflection of men's greater strength and correspondingly higher productivity. This paper investigates the gender wage gap in cigar making around 1900....

The US economy is still suffering from its most severe recession in seven decades. This article covers the key issue of taxes, spending and public debt, a major point of disagreement between the two candidates in the 2012 US election, President Obama and Governor Romney.

The UK is facing not one but two housing crises. The first is a short-term fall in prices and construction whcih is both driven by and driving the recession. The second and more profound is the overall shortage of housing and the problems of affordability that this generates.