Results

CEP discussion paper

Importing inequality: immigration and the top 1 percent

In this paper we study the contribution of migrants to the rise in UK top incomes. Using administrative data on the universe of UK taxpayers we show migrants are over-represented at the top of the income distribution, wi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

TV superstars: how a new technology disrupted the entertainment industry

The rollout of television to virtually every household in the United States in the mid-twentieth century created a potentially huge audience for people working in the entertainment industry. As Felix Koenig explains, thi...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Technology can benefit a few superstar workers, at the expense of everyone else

The rollout of television provides a natural experiment, creating an opportunity to isolate the impact of a technical disruption on the labour market, writes Felix Koenig....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technical change and superstar effects: evidence from the roll-out of television

Technical change that improves economies of scale can generate fast income growth among top earners at the expense of everyone else. I test this classic “superstar model” in the labor market for entertainers where the hi...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Journal:

Can Helping the Sick Hurt the Able? Incentives, Information and Disruption in a Welfare Reform

The UK Jobcentre Plus reform sharpened bureaucratic incentives to help disability benefit recipients (relative to unemployment insurance recipients) into jobs. In the long run, the policy raised exits off disability bene...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reservation wages and the wage flexibility puzzle

Wages are only mildly cyclical, implying that shocks to labour demand have a larger short-run impact on unemployment rather than wages, at odds with the quantitative predictions of the canonical search model – even if wa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can helping the sick hurt the able? Incentives, information and disruption in a welfare reform

The UK Jobcentre Plus reform sharpened bureaucratic incentives to help disability benefit recipients (relative to unemployment insurance recipients) into jobs. In the long-run, the policy raised disability exits by 10% a...Read more...