Education has an important effect on wages but it not clear whether this is because education raises productivity or because education is simply a signal of ability. We implement a number of existing tests for discriminating between these two explanations and find that they do not support the...

This article studies the determinants of partnership dissolution and focuses on the role of child support. We exploit the variation in child support liabilities and entitlements driven, in part, by the introduction of a new set of complex rules that determined child support liability in the UK,...

This article examines whether subjective expectations of unemployment are reliable indicators of the probability of becoming unemployed and investigates their association with wage growth. We find that workers' fears of unemployment are increased by their previous unemployment experience and by...

This paper reviews the effects of trade liberalisation on wages in developing countries, and presents new evidence for Brazil. Wages fell substantially in the traded sector after trade liberalisation, consistent with there being reduced rents as industries faced greater competition. After trade...

School quality is capitalised in house prices if access to schools is rationed by residential location. We generate empirical predictions from three different theoretical approaches linking house prices to school performance, distance to school and capacity. These are respectively based upon...

This paper studies the economic effects of minimum wages in a sector that is very vulnerable to minimum wage legislation, the UK care homes sector. We study the effects of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in April 1999 on wages and employment before and after minimum wage...