Labor market regulation can have harmful unintended consequences. In many markets, especially for public sector workers, pay is regulated to be the same for individuals across heterogeneous geographical labor markets. We would predict that this will mean labor supply problems and potential falls...

We analyze the causal impact of competition on managerial quality (and hospital performance). To address the endogeneity of market structure we analyze the English public hospital sector where entry and exit are controlled by the central government. Because closing hospitals in areas where the...

The labor search and matching model plays a growing role in macroeconomic analysis. This paper provides a critical, selective survey of the literature. Four fundamental questions are explored: how are unemployment, job vacancies, and employment determined as equilibrium phenomena? What...

This paper considers one of the paradoxes of incentive pay used in Britain's public services, namely that despite much evidence that it does not motivate employees, it continues to be widely used. It is argued that behind this evidence, there are significant examples in which its use has been...

The introduction of performance-related pay with Performance Management in the state school sector of England and Wales represents a considerable change in the school management system. After 2000, all teachers were subject to annual goal setting performance reviews. Experienced teachers were...

I evaluate the impact of the UK Working Time Regulations 1998, which introduced mandatory paid holiday entitlement. The regulation gave (nearly) all workers the right to a minimum of 4 weeks of paid holiday per a year. With constant weekly pay this change amounts effectively to an increase in...

From the autumn of 2014, a new performance pay scheme was introduced for school teachers in England and Wales. It makes pay progression for all teachers dependent upon their performance as evaluated by their line managers by means of performance appraisals. This paper reports the results of a...

The sheer scale and speed of the shift of payment system from time-based salaries to performance-related pay, PRP, in the British public services provides a unique opportunity to test the effects of incentive pay schemes. This study is based on the first large scale survey designed to measure...

Many business, academic, and scientific groups have recommended that the Congress substantially increase R&D spending in the near future. President Bush's American Competitiveness Initiative calls for a doubling of spending over the next decade in selected agencies that deal with the physical...

This paper shows that state control of some industries may have contributed to theincrease in European unemployment from the 1970s to the early 1990s. We develop asimple model with both publicly-run and privately-run enterprises and show that wheneconomic turbulence increases, higher...