This paper examines the impact of trade unions in the US and the UK and elsewhere. In both the US and the UK, despite declining membership numbers, unions are able to raise wages substantially over the equivalent non-union wage. Unions in other countries, such as Australia, Austria, Brazil,...

This paper estimates the size of the union membership wage premium by comparing wage outcomes for unionised workers with ''matched'' non-unionised workers. The method assumes selection on observables. For this identifying assumption to be plausible, one must be able to control for all...

This book takes a fresh look at the issue of job quality, analysing employer behaviour and discussing the agenda for policy intervention. The contributions in the volume provide new perspectives on a highly debated and policy relevant issue. Between 1997 and 2002, more than twelve million new...

Using nationally representative survey data for Finnish employees linked to register data on their wages and work histories we find wage effects of high involvement management (HIM) practices are generally positive and significant. However, employees with better wage and work histories are more...

Employees exposed to high involvement management (HIM) practices have higher subjective wellbeing, fewer accidents but more short absence spells than “like” employees not exposed to HIM. These results are robust to extensive work, wage and sickness absence history controls. We present a...

Ethnicity wage gaps in Great Britain are large and have persisted over time. Previous studies of these gaps have been almost exclusively confined to analyses of household data, so they could not account for the role played by individual employers, despite growing evidence of their wage-setting...

Most economists maintain that the labor market in the United States (and elsewhere) is 'tight' because unemployment rates are low and the Beveridge Curve (the vacancies-to-unemployment ratio) is high. They infer from this that there is potential for wage-push inflation. However, real wages are...

Central bankers are raising interest rates on the assumption that wage-push inflation may lead to stagflation. This is not the case. Although unemployment is low, the labor market is not 'tight'. On the contrary, we show that what matters for wage growth are the non-employment rate and the...

We utilize a new survey on Norwegian firms' digitalization and technology investments, linked to population-wide register data, to show that the pandemic massively disrupted the technology investment plans of firms, not only postponing investments, but also introducing new technologies. More...

Combining data on around four million respondents from the Gallup World Poll and the US Daily Tracker Poll we rank 164 countries, the 50 states of the United States and the District of Colombia on eight wellbeing measures. These are four positive affect measures - life satisfaction, enjoyment,...