Results

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

Pay Transparency and Gender Equality

Since 2018, UK firms with at least 250 employees have been mandated to publicly disclose gender equality indicators. Exploiting variations in this mandate across firm size and time, we show that pay transparency closes 1...Read more...

Journal article

Scandinavian Journal of Economics:

Where is the land of hope and glory? The geography of intergenerational mobility in England and Wales

This paper presents a new analysis of intergenerational mobility across three cohorts in England and Wales using linked decennial census microdata focusing on occupation, home ownership, and education. Four main results ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... UK gender pay gap reporting: a crude but effective policy

Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap, according to research by Jack Blundell who finds the difference between women and men's pay has shrunk by just un...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

This time is not so different: income dynamics during the Covid-19 recession

We use a UK employer-employee administrative earnings dataset to investigate the response of earnings and hours to business cycles. Exploiting our long panel of data from 1975 to 2020 we find wide heterogeneity in the ex...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Update: How is coronavirus affecting the self-employed?

A year into the Covid-19 crisis, it is widely recognised that the UK's self-employed workers have been among the hardest hit. Survey evidence shows that the latest lockdown is once again leaving the self-employed with lo...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

UK gender pay gap reporting: a crude but effective policy?

Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap. The difference between women's and men's pay has shrunk by just under a fifth at affected employers. Jack Blundel...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage responses to gender pay gap reporting requirements

In this paper I study a policy in which employers are required to publicly report gender pay gap statistics. Proponents argue that increasing the information available to workers and consumers places pressure on firms to...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Covid-19 and self-employment ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the crisis, the latest lockdown has hit the self-employed hard in the UK. In January 2021, 57% of surveyed self-employed workers were earning less than £1,000 per month, up from 31% in January 2020 an...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed - ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the Covid-19 crisis, it has become widely acknowledged that UK self-employment has been particularly hard hit. Here we continue our series investigating the experience of self-employed workers througho...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed: six months into the crisis

Six months after Covid-19 first hit, it is clear that it is the greatest economic crisis of the modern age. The economy has contracted far more rapidly than in previous crises, with GDP dropping by a record 19.5 per cent...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Where is the land of hope and glory?

Children’s chances of doing well at school, going to university, getting a good job and owning a house are strongly influenced by their parents’ education, occupation and home ownership – but what about the impact of whe...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Covid-19 and the future of self-employment

Jack Blundell reports how self-employed workers have been particularly hard hit by the crisis....Read more...

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation

Economic impact of coronavirus

The Treasury Committee launched the first stage of this inquiry on 18 March when it issued a call for evidence on the speed, effectiveness and reach of the Government's and Bank of England’s immediate financial responses...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Self-employment in the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 shock is one of the largest economic shocks that has taken place in living memory. The crisis has served to highlight the challenges governments face in extending social insurance to self-employed workers, f...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The Covid-19 recession is creating a crisis of inequality

Earnings may be affected differently by age, gender, and firm size, with large cuts for the young in small firms, write Brian Bell, Nick Bloom, Jack Blundell, and Luigi Pistaferri...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Covid-19 and wages: prepare for large cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

Brian Bell, Nick Bloom, Jack Blundell, and Luigi Pistaferri estimate how the ongoing pandemic may impact earnings by age group, gender, and firm size. The data suggests that young men working in small firms could see ear...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Prepare for large wage cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

The COVID-19 pandemic is turning into a global recession - probably the biggest drop in economic activity since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This column uses over 3 million earnings observations drawn from more tha...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The UK's self-employed workers: who they are and what they need

One in seven people in the UK workforce is now in self-employment – but this is a very diverse community. Jack Blundell is developing a typology of self-employed workers, which can then be used to assess differences in h...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Clusters in UK self-employment

UK Self-employment has soared in recent years. With existing labour market policy designed to cater for conventional employee relationships, policymakers in this field are increasingly seeking to better understand these ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Where is the Land of Hope and Glory? The geography of intergenerational mobility in England and Wales

Does the importance of your family background on how far you get in adulthood also depend on where you grow up? For England and Wales, a paucity of data has made this a difficult question to reliably answer. This paper p...Read more...