Our conclusions are that the most important influences on unemployment come from the following. (i) The longer unemployment benefits are available the longer unemployment lasts. Similarly, higher levels of benefits generate higher unemployment, with an elasticity of around one half. On the other...

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) measurement of inequality. We estimate this parameter using four large...

Why has unemployment fallen in some European countries but not in others? To answer this question, Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell and Richard Jackman revisit their landmark analysis of macroeconomic performance and the labour market.

In the UK the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but after ten years after labour market entry, there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points. This paper explores the reason for this gender gap in early-career wage growth, considering three main hypotheses -...

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991-97 this paper investigates the structure of the female wage equation and the gender wage differential. The discriminatory portion of the gender wage differential is overstated by over 40% when inadequate measures of female labour market...

A key feature of OECD economic growth since the early 1970s has been the secular decline in manufacturing's share of GDP and the secular rise of service sectors. This paper examines the role played by relative prices, technology, factor endowments, and labour market institutions in the process...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">Abstract</heading> Throughout the OECD, the period since the 1970s saw a secular decline in manufacturing's share of GDP and a secular rise in the share of services. Despite this being a central feature of growth, the economic forces behind deindustrialisation and the reasons why its pace varied so...