This paper uses data from a rich UK birth cohort to estimate the differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills between children born at the start and end of the academic year. It builds on the previous literature on this topic in England by using a more robust regression discontinuity design...

Children born at the end of the academic year have lower educational attainment, on average, than those born at the start of the academic year. Previous research shows that the difference is most pronounced early in pupils’ school lives, but remains evident and statistically significant...

This paper uses individual data on employment and wages to shed light on the UK’s productivity puzzle. It finds that workforce composition cannot explain the reduction in wages and hence productivity that we observe; instead, real wages have fallen significantly within jobs. Why? One...

Children born at the end of the academic year have lower educational attainment, on average, than those born at the start of the academic year. Previous research has shown that the difference is most pronounced early in pupils’ school lives, but remains evident and statistically...

Part-time work whilst still in full-time education is common in many industrialized countries, and teenagers constitute a significant component of the work force in some sectors of the labour market. In Britain, in the early 1990's, some 60 percent of 16-18 year olds still in full time education...

This paper presents an hedonic model of the price of a sample of new cars available in the UK during the period 1986 to 1995. It overcomes the problem of collinearity in the characteristics data by grouping them on a priori grounds and then using principal components analysis to generate group...

Economists have frequently argued that cash transfers are to be preferred to in-kind transfers. However, the argument is strictly true only where there are no market failures, and there are several arguments in favour of in-kind transfers that are valid in these circumstances In-kind transfers...