We explore factors affecting workplace survival and growth using nationally representative panel data for the British private sector. We address five policy-relevant questions. First, are young workplaces more vulnerable to closure and low growth than older 'like' workplaces? Second, are...

A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team level for the period 1920-2009 in order to test whether teams built on a more...

This paper analyses the continued decline of trade unions in Britain and examines the possible implications for workers, employers, and unions themselves. Membership of trade unions declined precipitously in the 1980s and 1990s. The rate of decline has slowed in the most recent decade, but we...

We establish the effects of salaries on worker performance by exploiting a natural experiment in which some workers in a particular occupation (football referees) switch from short-term contracts to salaried contracts. Worker performance improves among those who move onto salaried contracts...

A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team level for the period 1920-2009 in order to test whether teams built on a more...

Many firms encourage employees to own company stock through share plans that subsidize the price at favorable rates, but even so many employees do not buy shares. Using a new survey of employees in a multinational with a share ownership plan, we find considerable variation in joining among...

Using linked employer-employee data for Britain we find job satisfaction and job anxiety are negatively correlated but higher wages are associated with higher job satisfaction and higher job anxiety. However, we observe a positive association between higher wages and non-pecuniary job...

Happiness surveys typically ask people to say how they feel about their life experiences in retrospect, but smartphone technology makes it possible to collect responses on wellbeing 'in the moment'. The authors use this new 'Mappiness' data source to question whether we really are happy while we...