The researchers note that there have been historically unprecedented falls in UK real wages since the start of the Great Recession. What's more, the long US experience of stagnant real wages (median real weekly earnings in the United States in 2013 were at about the same level as in 1979) might...

This paper investigates the demise of unionisation in British private sector workplaces over the last quarter century. We show that dramatic union decline has occurred across all types of workplace. Although the union wage premium persists it is quite small in 2004. Negative union effects on...

This paper compares and contrasts the structure of school training for young non-university graduates in Britain and United States. We utilize two unique longitudinal surveys in these countries on young people to examine four issues: the extent of post school training in Britain and the U.S. and...

This paper compares changes in the structure if wages in France, Great Britain, Japan and the United States over the last twenty years. Wage differentials by education and occupation (skill differentials) narrowed substantially in all four countries in the 1970s. Overall wage inequality and...

Do entrepreneurs earn supernormal returns, or does competitive pressure ensure that entrepreneurs receive the same utility as workers? If those who run their own business get supernormal returns (or 'rents') they should be happier than those who work as employees. The paper tests this...

This paper characterizes the processes of job creation and job destruction (JC&D) in Britain, and provides more 'stylized facts' to hold up against models of JC&D. The analysis is based on data from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey. (WIRS) surveys of 1980, 1984 and 1990 each of which...

That greater product market competition has the potential to affect outcomes in labour and product markets is borne out one by one of the key premises of standard economic theory which predicts that, all other things held constant, prices should be lower and efficiency enhanced by more...

In this report the role of trade unions in the United States is compared with those in eighteen other OECD countries using micro-data at the level of the individual. The main findings are as follows: 1. The declines in union density experiences in the US in the last thirty years are not typical...

This paper examines the working lives of more than 110,000 individuals across twenty-three countries over an eight year period, 1985-1992. Both quantitative and qualitative data are examine. The data source is the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). The paper finds that the young are...

The paper provides international evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped locus linking the level of pay to the rate of regional (or industry) unemployment. This 'wage curve' is found using microeconomic data for Britain, the US, Canada, Korea, Austria, Italy, Holland, Switzerland,...