Given the UK finance sector is one of the largest in the world, it provides the perfect setting for a study into the nature of the finance sector wage premium. We reveal the pervasiveness of this premium, across all sub-sectors of finance, and across all occupations within finance, and with the...

UK graduate wage inequality has increased over the previous three decades. This paper demonstrates that most of the growth has occurred within degree subjects, with the largest occurring in non-STEM subjects. The paper therefore investigates two potential explanations. The first is the increase...

This paper provides a supply and demand analysis for the changes in subject of degree, focussing specifically on the UK but also finding similar descriptive patterns in subject choices for the US. The paper makes a unique contribution to the literature by estimating subject-specific implied...

The ‘Want2Work’ programme was designed to help individuals back into work. This article uses propensity score matching to evaluate the success of a policy that cannot otherwise be evaluated using standard parametric techniques. Using a range of estimation methods, sub-samples and types of...

The paper explores the incidence of over and under education and the effect on earnings for immigrants and natives who hold UK qualifications, drawn from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey 1993-2003. The paper also compares earnings penalties associated with over and under education across...

We study spatial changes in labour market inequality for US states and MSAs using Census and American Community Survey data between 1980 and 2010. We report evidence of significant spatial variations in education employment shares and in the college wage premium for US states and MSAs, and show...

We study spatial changes in labour market inequality for US states and MSAs using Census and American Community Survey data between 1980 and 2010. We report evidence of significant spatial variations in education employment shares and in the college wage premium for US states and MSAs, and show...

Despite the recent financial crisis the UK financial pay premium has continued to rise. To some extent this is a consequence of increased skill intensity in the finance sector, but this paper shows that finance workers have higher cognitive skills, on average, and this partly explains their...