This paper examines the relationship between immigration and crime in a setting where large migration flows offer an opportunity to carefully appraise whether the populist view that immigrants cause crime is borne out by rigorous evidence. We consider possible crime effects from two large waves...

In this paper we look at links between police resources and crime in a different way to the existing economics of crime work. To do so we focus on a policy intervention - the Street Crime Initiative - that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocated additional resources to some...

In this paper we test the HRM/union substitution hypothesis that human resource management (HRM) practices act as a substitute for unionization. We use British workplace data between 1980 and 1998 which allows us to examine for the first time whether increased HRM incidence has coincided with...

This paper offers a critical appraisal of the now sizable empirical literature that values school quality and performance through housing valuations. This literature consistently finds housing valuations to be significantly higher in places where measured school quality is higher, implying a...

In this paper we implement a powerful empirical approach than has not previously been applied to rail transport evaluation to ascertain how much consumers value rail access. We study the effects on house prices of a transport innovation that altered the distance to the nearest station for some...

In this paper we examine the relationship between childhood factors and subsequent economic and social success or failure as an adult. Unlike many studies which typically have little data on pre-labour market factors (other than schooling or in fewer cases, test scores) we are able to draw upon...

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...

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...

We examine trends in wage inequality in the US and other countries over the past four decades. We show that there has been a secular increase in the 90-50 wage differential in the US and the UK since the late 1970s. By contrast the 50-10 differential rose mainly in the 1980s and flattened or...

Despite its relatively small size, the private school sector plays a prominent role in British society. This paper focuses on changing wage and education differentials between privately educated and state educated individuals in Britain. It reports evidence that the private/state school wage...