An important policy issue is whether the National Minimum Wage (NMW) introduced in Britain in April 1999, is a stepping stone to higher wages or traps workers in a low-wage no-wage cycle. In this paper we utilise the longitudinal element of the Labour Force Survey over the period 1999 to 2003 to...

This paper utilises the panel element of the BHPS (waves 9 to 14) to examine the dynamics of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) introduced to Britain in 1999. Specifically a persistence measure based on a random effects probit model for those affected by the NMW is constructed. The conditional...

This paper analyses the relationship between training, job satisfaction and workplace performance using the British 2004 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). Several measures of performance are analysed including absence, quits, financial performance, labour productivity and product...

In the UK concern has been expressed over the degree of gender occupational segregation. Though there are no general provisions for affirmative action, it does apply in limited areas and pro-active measures have been suggested. In this paper we focus on gender differences in work preferences in...

Regional unemployment rates in Great Britain have narrowed dramatically in recent years. However, significant differences still remain in terms of both employment and economic inactivity rates, which may now better reflect relative labour market performance. This paper examines these differences...

This paper uses unique data for the economically inactive to calculate elasticity estimates of the reservation wage and exit probability with respect to state benefits and the arrival rate of job offers, and finds that the inactive react in similar ways to benefit increases as the unemployed.

The U.K. government has recently committed itself to an ambitious 80 per cent employment rate target. Recognising that achieving this aspiration will require significant numbers of the economically inactive to (re-)engage with the labour market, the government has enacted various policy reforms...

A small number of recent empirical studies for several countries has reported the intriguing finding that the ?advantage? previously enjoyed by men in respect of training incidence and reported in earlier work in the literature has been reversed. The present paper explores the sources of the...

This paper integrates two strands of literature on overskilling and disability using the 2004 British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS). It finds that the disabled are significantly more likely to be mismatched in the labour market, to suffer from a pay penalty and to have lower job...

Using data from the 2002 LFS, we examine the impact of disability on labour market outcomes by gender. Our results indicate that substantial differences in both the likelihood of employment and levels of earnings exist, despite several years of operation of the Disability Discrimination Act....