Much of the dramatic change in skill and wage structure observed in recent years in the United States is believed to stem from the impact of new technology. This paper compares the changing skill structure of wages and employment in the United States with three other advanced developed countries...

That greater product market competition has the potential to affect outcomes in labour and product markets is borne out one by one of the key premises of standard economic theory which predicts that, all other things held constant, prices should be lower and efficiency enhanced by more...

This paper uses microeconomic data from the UK Family Expenditure Surveys and the General Household Surveys to describe and explain changes in the distribution of male wages from 1965 to 1992. Both education and age differentials can be explained as cohort effects; these are important in the UK...

Productivity growth in 329 companies (total employment = 1.96 million workers) is analysed for the period 1984-1989. The study breaks new ground by (i) analysing the impact of changes in union status - such as repudiation of a closed shop or derecognition - on productivity growth; (ii) examining...

This paper investigates the relationship between trade unions and financial performance using British establishment-level data in 1990, following the anti-union legislation of the 1980s. We estimate the overall impact of manual union recognition in 1990 to be roughly half what it was in 1984,...

In this paper I document changes in the distribution of employment in the UK labour market in the 1980s. I use two longitudinal data sources, an industry-level panel data set between 1979 and 1990 and the panel component of the 1984 and 1990 establishment-level Workplace Industrial Relations...

One of the most striking features of European labour markets is the high incidence of long-term unemployment. In this paper we review the literature on its causes and consequences. Our main conclusions are that: the rise in the incidence of long-term unemployment has been ''caused'' by a...

Although there is a large literature on the economic effects of minimum wages on labour market outcomes (especially employment), there is hardly any evidence on their impact on firm performance. This is surprising: minimum wages appear to have a significant impact on wages, but only a limited...

In this paper we examine the relationship between unions and earnings dispersion using data from 1980, 1984 and 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys. The initial focus is on the cross-section relationship using the 1990 data unionised establishments are seen to have lower earnings...

This paper examines the structure of wages in a very specific labour market, for care assistants in residential homes for the elderly on England''s "sunshine coast". This sector corresponds closely to economists'' notion of what should be a competitive labour market as: (i) there are a large...