This paper analyzes the effects of a ban on smoking in public places upon firms and consumers. It presents a theoretical model and tests its predictions using unique data from before and after the introduction of smoking bans in the UK. Cigarette smoke is a public bad, and smokers and...

We provide a new explanation for why firms pay for general training in a competitive labor market. If firms are unable to tailor individual wages to ability, for informational or institutional reasons, they will pay for general training in order to attract better quality workers. The market...

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to study the effect of a monitoring structure on the play of the infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. Keeping the stage game fixed, we examine the behavior of subjects when information about past actions is perfect (perfect monitoring), noisy but public...

We study marital sorting on academic qualifications and latent ability in an equilibrium marriage market model using the 1972 UK Raising of the School-Leaving Age (RoSLA) legislation as a natural experiment that induced a sudden, large shift in the distribution of academic qualifications in...

We study marital sorting on academic qualifications and latent ability in an equilibrium marriage market model using the 1972 UK Raising of the School-Leaving Age (RoSLA) legislation as a natural experiment that induced a sudden, large shift in the distribution of academic qualifications in...

We provide a new explanation for why firms pay for general training in a competitive labor market. If firms are unable to tailor individual wages to ability, for informational or institutional reasons, they will pay for general training in order to attract better quality workers. The market...

"Right to Buy" (RTB) was a large-scale UK housing policy whereby incumbent tenants in public housing could buy their properties at heavily subsidised prices. The policy increased the national homeownership rate by over 10 percentage points between 1980 and the late 1990s. A key feature of RTB is...

Using data on 100 years of 19th century criminal trials at London's Old Bailey, this paper offers clear evidence of disparate treatment of Irish-named defendants and victims by English juries. We measure surname Irishness and Englishness using place of birth in the 1881 census. Irish-named...

Delivery of vocational education in schools is a controversial issue around the world and attempts to improve it have been tried for decades. A substantive innovation in vocational education provision came about in 2010 in England when a new form of hybrid schools was introduced that combine...