Our conclusions are that the most important influences on unemployment come from the following. (i) The longer unemployment benefits are available the longer unemployment lasts. Similarly, higher levels of benefits generate higher unemployment, with an elasticity of around one half. On the other...

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) measurement of inequality. We estimate this parameter using four large...

Why has unemployment fallen in some European countries but not in others? To answer this question, Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell and Richard Jackman revisit their landmark analysis of macroeconomic performance and the labour market.

In the UK the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but after ten years after labour market entry, there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points. This paper explores the reason for this gender gap in early-career wage growth, considering three main hypotheses -...

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991-97 this paper investigates the structure of the female wage equation and the gender wage differential. The discriminatory portion of the gender wage differential is overstated by over 40% when inadequate measures of female labour market...

A key feature of OECD economic growth since the early 1970s has been the secular decline in manufacturing's share of GDP and the secular rise of service sectors. This paper examines the role played by relative prices, technology, factor endowments, and labour market institutions in the process...

The theoretical result that there are welfare gains from trade is a central tenet of international economics. In a class of trade models that satisfy a "gravity equation," the welfare gains from trade can be computed using only the open economy domestic trade share and the elasticity of trade...

We estimate a structural model of heterogeneous multiproduct firms to examine the sources of firm heterogeneity emphasized in the recent trade and macro literatures. Using Nielsen barcode data on prices and sales, we estimate elasticities of substitution within and between firms, and use the...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between the spatial distribution of economic activity and transportation costs. We develop a multi-region model of economic geography that we use to understand the general equilibrium implications of transportation...