Individual labor earnings observed in worker panel data have complex, highly persistent dynamics. We investigate the capacity of a structural job search model with i.i.d. productivity shocks to replicate salient properties of these dynamics, such as the covariance structure of earnings, the...

Much of the literature on diversity assumes that individuals have an exogenous "taste for discrimination". In contrast with this approach, we build a model where preferences over the nature of one's community are derived indirectly, and arise because the composition of the community determines...

This paper analyses efficient contracts for digital content, focusing on the music industry. It contributes to the quest for an efficient intellectual property rights environment for information goods. Moreover, it adds an interesting application to the field of behavioural economics. The model...

The impact of IP protection on the innovation incentives of startup firms is examined in a dynamic model where an incumbent faces a sequence of potential startups and the incumbent's chance of winning an infringement lawsuit increases with the size of its patent portfolio. It is shown that...

In this paper we construct a time series of annuity prices from 1972-2002, and examine whether annuity rates are unfairly priced, and assess the extent to which annuitisation risks are hedged by stock market returns. We find no evidence that the average annuity rate is unfairly low. Depending on...

As with most water companies in the world UK water companies face very little competition for the delivery of water within their area. However, recently both the government and the regulator, Ofwat, have indicated that they wish to see a major change in the industry through a significant growth...

This paper assesses the impact of academic selection at age 11 on children in the minority of areas that still operate such a system. The answers are very clear. Overall there is little or no impact on attainment, but those educated in grammar schools do substantially better (around four grade...

The recent literature on intergenerational mobility in the UK has been focused on measuring the level and change in the relationship between parental income and children’s earnings as adults among recent cohorts. This paper is the first to analyse in detail the factors that generate these...

When designing incentives for a manager, the trade-off between insurance and a "good" allocation of effort across various tasks is often identified with a trade-off between the responsiveness (sensitivity, precision, signal-noise ratio) of the performance measure and its similarity (congruity,...

The purpose of this paper is to examine patterns of attainment of boys and girls at different stages of their secondary education and to investigate factors that may affect pupil outcomes. We employ a national dataset of matched examination results, recently released by the Department for...