Productivity

This paper provides a non-technical review of the evidence on the returns to education and training for the individual, the firm and the economy at large

This paper develops and estimates a human capital model of wage growth based on learning by doing.

This paper surveys the evidence on the effects of technical change on skills, wages and employment by examining the micro-econometric evidence.

Recently the data underlying the Annual Census of Production has been made available to academic

This paper uses microeconomic data from the British Household Panel and General Household Surveys to describe how the distribution of pay differs between the public and private sectors in 1983 and in the early 1900s

This commentary asks whether a productivity gap is really the problem facing Britain. Do lower levels of output per worker suggest greater inefficiency or do they reflect differences in levels of inputs? Historically low levels of investment suggest that our stock of R&D, physical and human capital may be lower than it is in the other main industrialised countries.

This Commentary looks at public pay in detail, tracing its trend relative to the private sector over the 1980s and 1990s and showing how the gap in pay between the public and private sectors differs dramatically across occupations, gender and education groups. These findings illustrate how misleading comparisons of public and private sector pay based on aggregate data can be.

Much of the dramatic change in skill and wage structure observed in recent years in the United States is believed to stem from the impact of new technology.

The first half of the report sheds some new light on the following questions with a detailed and consistent comparison of income distributions in Western Germany and the UK from 1984 to 1992. To what extent was the income distribution in Western Germany similar to the UK in 1984? Did the inequality of West German incomes rise to the same extent? What was the differing role of the labour market, the tax and benefit system and demographic change in each country? The second half of the report concentrates on whether and how education, training and wage setting systems together with other institutional factors in Western Germany can explain the differences relative to the more deregulated UK labour market.

This paper uses microeconomic data from the UK Family Expenditure Surveys (FES) and the General Household Surveys (GHS) to describe and explain changes in the distribution of male wages.

This paper uses the General Household Survey data for the UK to study earnings

This paper concerns the relationship between refuse collection contract costs and the number of bidders for a sample of English local authorities.

This report shows the extent to which low pay and unemployment are related, the effects of periods out of work on future earnings and the degree to which low pay is a persistent phenomenon. Importantly it demonstrates the way in which a minimum wage might affect a much higher proportion of the population than is generally appreciated because of the way in which people move in and out of low paid work. A chapter of the report is also given over to the effects of work experience and job tenure on pay levels.

Are the provision and the extent of work-related training in the UK affected by the amount of job-to-job mobility among the work-force? Conversely, does receiving different types of work-related training make employees more or less likely to move jobs? This report examines both these questions in detail using panel data from the British Labour Force Survey and the National Child Development Survey.

It is widely accepted that an accurate assessment of the extent to which graduates benefit from higher education is crucial for the effective development of policy in this area. For the first time in the UK, this report examines two dimensions of labour market success (employment and wages) in the early 1990s for a group of 33-year-olds who undertook higher education and compares their performance with a similarly-aged group who obtained at least one (and alternatively at least two) A level qualifications but did not proceed into higher education.

Since the 1980s, there has been increased interest among unions and two opposition parties in the possibility of introducing a national minimum wage (NMW).

Much of the dramatic change in skill and wage structure observed in recent years in the United States is believed to stem from the impact of new technology.

Work Related training is currently at the top of the political and public policy agenda. The report looks at who gets work related training in Britain, the effect it has on the subsequent employment prospects of men and women, the wage payoffs to different types of work related training, and whether it improves the wages prospects of relatively low skilled individuals.