Results

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

Children, unhappiness and family finances

The common finding of a zero or negative correlation between the presence of children and parental well-being continues to generate research interest. We consider international data, including well over one million obser...Read more...

CEP real wages update

The Return of Falling Real Wages

The falling real wages experienced by most UK workers between 2008 and 2014 were followed by modest growth in 2015 and 2016. But it has now reversed back as real wages have once again started to fall. This is courtesy of...Read more...

CEP real wages update

The Current 2% UK Wage Growth Norm

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CEP real wages update

Slowing UK Wage Growth

We have previously examined the path of nominal and real wages in the UK (Blanchflower and Machin, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). In that work, we expressed the view that in recent years there has been sufficient slack in the lab...Read more...

CEP real wages update

UK real wages: a long way to go

Prospects for a boost in the real wages of UK workers remain bleak, despite some commentators still continuing to paint a more optimistic picture. This report, the latest in a new series of CEP Real Wages Updates, notes ...Read more...

CEP real wages update

Real wages continue to fall in the UK

Real wages continue to fall - in the UK and elsewhere - yet despite this striking feature of the labour market, some commentators anticipate resurgent pay growth in the near future. This report, the first in a new series...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Falling real wages

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 ...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

The wage impact of trade unions in the UK public and private sectors

There is a growing gap in the union membership wage premium between public and private-sector workers in the United Kingdom. Using the Labour Force Surveys of 1993-2006, the gap between the membership premium in the publ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... The end of trade unionism as we know it?

Alex Bryson and David Blanchflower explore whether the decline of unions in Britain really matters for employees and firms....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Union Decline in Britain

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 wa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Union Wage Premium in the US and the UK

This paper presents evidence of both counter-cyclical and secular decline in the union membership wage premiu m in the US and the UK over the last couple of decades. The premium has fallen for most groups of workers, the...Read more...

Book

The Wage Curve

The Wage Curve casts doubt on some of the most important ideas in macroeconomics, labor economics, and regional economics. According to macroeconomic orthodoxy, there is a relationship between unemployment and the ra...Read more...

CentrePiece article

A raw deal for the young

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CEP discussion paper

The Role and Influence of Trade Unions in the OECD

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 u...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Growing Into Work

This paper examines youth labor markets in OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s, when the youth share of the population fell rapidly in most of these countries. Despite the decline in the youth share of the population a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Creation and Job Destruction in Great Britain in the 1980s

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 Indus...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Market Competition Wages and Productivity: International Evidence from Establishment-Level Data

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 hel...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

New Technology and Jobs: Comparative Evidence from a Two Country Study

It is widely recognised that one of the greatest economic problems facing developed countries is unemployment. An example of this recognition is the recent reports by the OECD ('The OECD Jobs Study', 1994) on unemploymen...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Youth Labour Markets in 23 Countries: A Comparison Using Micro Data

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 Intern...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Legacy of Communist Labor Relations

This paper uses the International Social Science Programme (ISSP) surveys for Hungary and a set of Western countries, supplemented with related survey data for East Germany, Poland, and Slovenia, to examine the extent to...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Did the Thatcher Reforms Change British Labour Market Performance?

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CEP discussion paper

A Comparison of Changes in the Structure of Wages in Four OECD Countries

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 substa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Entrepreneurship

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 shoul...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International Wage Curve

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 ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Training at Work: A Comparison of US and US and British Youths

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...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Longitudinal Analysis of Young Entrepreneurs in Australia and the United States

This paper examines the pattern of self-employment in Australia and the United States. We particularly focus on the movement of young people in and out of self-employment using comparable longitudinal data from the two c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Self-Employment and Mrs Thatcher's Enterprise

The paper studies self-employment in Great Britain using the British Social Attitude Surveys of 1983 to 1989. Drawing upon (i) direct survey questions, and (ii) econometric analysis, it finds no eivdence for the hypothes...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Going different ways: Unionism in the US and other advanced OECD CountriesF

In this paper we compare the changing pattern of unionization in OECD countries, review existing evidence, and present new information on cross-country differences in union/non-union differentials in labour market outcom...Read more...