Results

CentrePiece article

Innovation in the time of Covid-19

Businesses have rapidly adopted new technologies and new ways of working in response to the massive disruptions caused by the pandemic. A CEP report by Capucine Riom and Anna Valero suggests that if such innovation conti...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

The business response to Covid-19: the CEP-CBI survey on technology adoption

We present new data from a survey of 375 UK businesses conducted in July 2020 in partnership with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which seeks to understand the way in which firms have innovated in response t...Read more...

Journal article

SERIEs:

Job loss at home: children's school performance during the Great Recession

This paper studies the intergenerational impact of parental job loss on school performance during the Great Recession in Spain. Collecting data through parental surveys in a school in the province of Barcelona, I obtain ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and Brexit: Real-time updates on business performance in the United Kingdom

Nearly four months have passed since the UK went into lockdown to restrict the spread of Covid-19. The health effects have been severe, and an inevitable consequence of the lockdown was a huge 20 per cent decline in GDP ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Autonomous Schools and Strategic Pupil Exclusion

This paper studies whether pupil performance gains in autonomous schools in England can be attributed to the strategic exclusion of poorly performing pupils. England has had two phases of academy school introduction, the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The motivational cost of inequality: pay gaps reduce the willingness to pursue rewards

Factors beyond a person’s control, such as demographic characteristics at birth, often influence the availability of rewards an individual can expect for their efforts. We know surprisingly little how such pay-gaps due t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Employee wellbeing: the impact on productivity and firm performance

Does having happier staff mean higher productivity and improvements in companies' bottom line? A study of over 1.8 million employees across 73 countries by Christian Krekel, George Ward and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve detects a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations

From 2020 the health and relationships aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents. However less is known about how it can be taught in an effective manner....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employee wellbeing, productivity and firm performance

Does higher employee wellbeing lead to higher productivity, and, ultimately, to tangible benefits to the bottom line of businesses? We survey the evidence and study this question in a meta-analysis of 339 independent res...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

Becoming a Research Institute: the Centre for Economic Performance

by Stephen Machin As Director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE, I am delighted that the Centre has been named as one of the two inaugural ESRC Research Institutes. This is testament to the achievements...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Industry in Britain: an atlas

The UK’s financial services industry is not nearly as London-centric as the creative industries. Rather than the South East of England being the country’s productivity engine, it is a band stretching west from the capita...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Gender gaps in performance: Evidence from young lawyers

This paper documents the gender gap in performance among highskilled professionals in the United States. On the basis of widely used performance measures in law firms, we find that male lawyers bill 10 percent more hours...Read more...

CEP report

Industry in Britain - an atlas

Living near a productive company can have considerable economic benefits. It means the chance of well-paid jobs, creates opportunities for suppliers of goods and services, and can be a boost to local retailers. This comm...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The hospital as a multi-product firm: the effect of hospital competition on value-added indicators of clinical quality

There is increasing international interest in using Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to assess health care provider performance. PROMs are a fundamental advance on existing indicators of health care quality in t...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

How English care homes have coped with the National Living Wage

Giulia Giupponi is an ESRC-funded PhD student at the London School of Economics and a research assistant at the Centre for Economic Performance. Stephen Machin is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Does teacher turnover affect young people's academic achievement?

Do educational results suffer in schools where there is a high turnover among the teaching staff? Shqiponja Telhaj and colleagues explore this question by analysing data from all state secondary schools in England....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The diffusion of knowledge via managers' mobility

Better managers and managerial practices lead to better firm performance. Yet, little is known about what happens when managers move across firms. Does a firm hiring a good manager improve its performance? If yes is ther...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Primary academies in England

Attendance at a primary academy leads to no discernible improvement in pupils’ test scores, according to research by Andrew Eyles, Stephen Machin and Sandra McNally. This suggests that further extension of the academies ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unexpected school reform: academisation of primary schools in England

The change of government in 2010 provoked a large structural change in the English education landscape. Unexpectedly, the new government offered primary schools the chance to have ‘the freedom and the power to take contr...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Traffic Externalities and Housing Prices: Evidence from the London Congestion Charge

This study exploits the introduction of the London Congestion Charge (CC) that greatly improves traffic conditions in Central London to provide new evidence on the capitalization of traffic externalities onto housing val...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

The ‘photo-finish effect’: when third place winners are happier than second

Laura Kudrna, a London School of Economics scholarship PhD candidate, researches the effects of achievement on happiness, particularly focusing on examples of when greater success – be it financial, academic, romantic, o...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

School reforms and pupil performance

The relationship between school reforms, specifically those involving the introduction of new school types, and pupil performance is studied. The particular context is the introduction of academy schools in England, but ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

CEO pay and the rise of relative performance contracts: a question of governance?

Would moving to relative performance contracts improve the alignment between CEO pay and performance? To address this, we exploit the large rise in relative performance awards and the share of equity pay in the UK over ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rethinking deindustrialization

Manufacturing in high-income countries is on the decline and Denmark is no exception. Manufacturing employment and the number of firms have been shrinking as a share of the total and in absolute levels. This paper uses a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Rapid response policing: the impact on crime detection

Rapid response policing not only boosts crime detection but also reduces the time it takes to find the offenders. That is the central finding of analysis of data from the Greater Manchester Police by Jordi Blanes i Vidal...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Parental job loss: the impact on children's school performance

Unemployment is bad news not just for the individuals who lose their jobs but also for their families. Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela examines this underemphasised cost of economic downturns by measuring the impact of parental ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Under pressure: gender differences in responding to exam stakes

Do girls and boys respond differently to exam pressure, perhaps depending on the subject and whether or not the tests are 'high stakes'? Ghazala Azmat and colleagues consider evidence for secondary school age children ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Academy schools and pupil outcomes

Nearly two thirds of secondary schools in England now have academy status. Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin are tracking the impact of this unprecedented educational reform on pupil outcomes - in both the first wave of '...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The effect of police response time on crime detection

Police agencies devote vast resources to minimising the time that it takes them to attend the scene of a crime. Despite this, the long-standing consensus is that police response time has no meaningful effect on the likel...Read more...

Blog

ESRC blog:

Making the world a happier place

Professor Lord Richard Layard directs the Wellbeing Programme at the ESRC Centre for Economic Performance, and has made major contributions on unemployment, inflation, inequality and post-Communist reform. Author of the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The introduction of academy schools to England's education

We study the origins of what has become one of the most radical and encompassing programmes of school reform seen in the recent past amongst advanced countries – the introduction of academy schools to English secondary e...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Phone home: should mobiles be banned in schools?

Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy look at the impact of mobile phone bans on pupils' academic achievement in four cities in England....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Happier workers, higher profits

Alex Bryson and colleagues find that UK employees' job satisfaction is positively associated with workplace financial performance....Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Oil: the impact on women's work

Stephan Maurer and Andrei Potlogea explore whether oil-dominated economies are naturally biased against women's labour market participation....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does worker wellbeing affect workplace performance?

This paper uses linked employer-employee data to investigate the relationship between employees’ subjective well-being and workplace performance in Britain. The analyses show a clear, positive and statistically-significa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job loss at home: children's school performance during the great recession in Spain

This paper studies the effect of parental job loss on children's school performance during the Great Recession in Spain, using an original panel dataset for students observed since the beginning of the crisis in a school...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ill communication: technology, distraction and student performance

This paper investigates the impact of schools banning mobile phones on student test scores. By surveying schools in four English cities regarding their mobile phone policies and combining it with administrative data, we ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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

Disability rolls have escalated in developed nations over the last 40 years. The UK stands out because the numbers on these benefits stopped rising when a welfare reform (“Jobcentre Plus”) was introduced that integrated ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Has performance pay increased wage inequality in Britain?

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) we show performance pay (PP) increased earnings dispersion among men and women, and to a lesser extent among full-time working women, in the decade of economic gr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

'High' achievers? Cannabis access and academic performance

This paper investigates how legal cannabis access affects student performance. Identification comes from an exceptional policy introduced in the city of Maastricht which discriminated legal access based on individuals’ n...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Productivity and Business Policies

UK productivity stagnated after the Great Recession of 2008-09 and remains about 15 percent below historical trends. This 'productivity puzzle' is due to a mixture of cyclical and structural effects - the fall is not ent...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All-star or benchwarmer? Relative age, cohort size and career success in the NHL

We analyze the performance outcomes of National Hockey League (NHL) players over 18 seasons (1990-1991 to 2007-2008) as a function of the demographic conditions into which they were born. We have three main findings. Fir...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Differences in Response to Big Stakes

It is commonly perceived that increasing incentives improves performance. However, the reaction to increased incentives might differ between men and women, leading to gender differences in performance. In a natural exper...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Women Earn Less Even as Social Entrepreneurs?

Based upon unique survey data collected using respondent driven sampling methods, we investigate whether there is a gender pay gap among social entrepreneurs in the UK. We find that women as social entrepreneurs earn 29%...Read more...

Journal article

Feature Issue:

What predicts a successful life? A life-course model of well-being

Policy makers who care about well-being need a recursive model of how adult life‐satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. We estimate such a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Relaxing Credit Constraints in Emerging Economies: The Impact of Public Loans on the Performance of Brazilian Manufacturers

n emerging economies credit constraints are often perceived as one of the most important market frictions hampering firm innovation and productivity growth in manufacturing. Huge amounts of public money are devoted to th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fueling the Gender Gap? Oil and Women's Labor and Marriage Market Outcomes

This paper analyzes the effect of resource-based economic specialization on women's labor market outcomes. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields in the Southern United States coupled with a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are Firms Paying More For Performance?

Despite its potential to raise productivity, performance-related-pay (PRP) is not widespread in market-oriented economies. Furthermore, despite secular changes conducive to its take-up, there is mixed evidence as to whet...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Does management matter in schools?

Better school management is associated with better pupil achievement, according to CEP analysis of the quality of management practices in schools in a range of developed and developing countries. Renata Lemos notes that ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Human resource management: how much do firms really need?

More complete systems of human resource management (HRM) could deliver really extensive gains in employee motivation, according to an analysis of representative data from British workplaces by Michael White and Alex Brys...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Immigrant Diversity and Economic Development in Cities: A Critical Review

This paper reviews a growing literature investigating how ‘immigrant’ diversity relates to urban economic performance. As distinct from the labor-supply focus of much of the economics of immigration, this paper reviews w...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Predicts a Successful Life? A Life-Course Model of Well-Being

If policy-makers care about well-being, they need a recursive model of how adult life-satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. We estimate such...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Extreme Wage Inequality: Pay at the Very Top

We provide new evidence on the growth in pay at the very top of the wage distribution in the UK. Sectoral decompositions show that workers in the financial sector have accounted for the majority of the gains at the top o...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

What Do We Know About China's CEO's? Evidence from Across the Whole Economy

All that we know about the CEO labour market in China comes from studies of public listed companies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This paper is the first to examine the operation of the CEO labour market across all...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Gender gaps in performance

Ghazala Azmat and Rosa Ferrer analyse data on young lawyers to understand what drives differences in earnings between highly skilled men and women....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Are public sector employees overcompensated?

Alexander Danzer and Peter Dolton use the concept of 'total reward' to assess whether public sector pay and pensions are too high relative to the private sector....Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: UK chief executives: paid for performance?

Does it matter whether you work for a successful company? And if so, does it matter who you are? To answer these questions we construct a unique panel dataset covering the pay of all CEOs, senior managers and a fully rep...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Growth and productivity: UK economic performance since 1997

A common view is that the performance of the UK economy between 1997 and 2010 under Labour was very weak and that the current economic problems are a consequence of poor policies in this period. In this report, we analys...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Matching Firms, Managers, and Incentives

We exploit a unique combination of administrative sources and survey data to study the match between firms and managers. The data includes manager characteristics, such as risk aversion and talent; firm characteristics, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers

This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in the United States. Unlike other high-skilled professions, the legal profession assesses performance using transparent measures tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

CEO Bonding: Who Posts Performance Bonds and Why?

Despite their theoretical value in tackling principal-agent problems at low cost to firms there is almost no empirical literature on the prevalence and correlates of performance bonds posted by corporate executives. Usin...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Subjective Performance Evaluation in the Public Sector: Evidence from School Inspections

Performance measurement in the public sector is largely based on objective metrics, which may be subject to gaming behaviour. This paper investigates a novel subjective performance evaluation system where independent ins...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Provision of Relative Performance Feedback Information: An Experimental Analysis of Performance and Happiness

This paper studies the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on individuals’ performance and affective response, under both piece-rate and flat-rate incentives. In a laboratory setup, agents perfo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paying for Performance: Incentive Pay Schemes and Employees' Financial Participation

We present new comparable data on the incidence of performance pay schemes in Europe and the USA. We find that the percentage of employees exposed to incentive pay schemes ranges from around 10-15 percent in some Europea...Read more...

CEP report

UK economic performance since 1997: growth, productivity and jobs

A common view is that the performance of the UK economy between 1997 and 2010 under Labour was very weak and that the current economic problems are a consequence of poor policies in this period. In this report, we analys...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

HRM and Workplace Motivation: Incremental and Threshold Effects

The HRM-performance linkage often invokes an assumption of increased employee commitment to the organization and other positive effects of a motivational type. We present a theoretical framework in which motivational eff...Read more...

Submissions to parliamentary inquiries and government consultations

BIS - Executive Remuneration Discussion Paper

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Improve Worker Wellbeing?

Employees exposed to high involvement management (HIM) practices have higher subjective wellbeing, fewer accidents but more short absence spells than “like” employees not exposed to HIM. These results are robust to exten...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Teachers' Pay and Pupil Performance

If you pay peanuts, do you get monkeys? If teachers were better paid and higher up the national income distribution, would there be an improvement in pupil performance? Peter Dolton and Oscar Marcenaro-Gutierrez examine ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Simple Theory of Managerial Talent, Pay Contracts and Wage Distribution

This paper develops a simple theory of pay structures and pay levels across heterogeneous agents by bringing together optimal contracts inside the firm and competitive resource allocation in the market. The central idea ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managerial Incentives and Compensation in a Global Market

This paper embeds a principal-agent firm in an otherwise standard trade model a la Melitz (2003) to investigate the impact of globalization on the provision of managerial incentives and on the distribution of managerial ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Land that Lean Manufacturing Forgot? Management Practices in Transition Countries

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. The...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Team performance and the optimal spread of talent

Alex Bryson and colleagues use US baseball data to investigate whether performance suffers if there is too wide a gap between the skills of a team's stars and the rest....Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Chernobyl: the long-term health and economic consequences

Hartmut Lehmann and Jonathan Wadsworth assess the long-lasting effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster on the people of Ukraine....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of Chernobyl on Health and Labour Market Performance

Using longitudinal data from Ukraine we examine the extent of any long-lasting effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster on the health and labour market performance of the adult workforce. The variation i...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Changing School Autonomy: Academy Schools and their Introduction to England's Education

In this paper, we study a high profile case - the introduction of academy schools into the English secondary school sector - that has allowed schools to gain more autonomy and flexible governance by changing their school...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Lead to Higher Pay?

Using nationally representative survey data for Finnish employees linked to register data on their wages and work histories we find wage effects of high involvement management (HIM) practices are generally positive and s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Heterogeneous Worker Ability and Team-Based Production: Evidence from Major League Baseball, 1920-2009

A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team le...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade Union Membership and Influence 1999-2009

This paper analyses the continued decline of trade unions in Britain and examines the possible implications for workers, employers, and unions themselves. Membership of trade unions declined precipitously in the 1980s an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The long-term effect of digital innovation on bank performance: an empirical study of SWIFT adoption in financial services

We examine the impact on bank performance of the adoption of SWIFT, a network-based technological infrastructure for worldwide interbank telecommunication. We construct a new longitudinal dataset of 6,848 banks in 29 cou...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Hospital competition is good for patients, and for efficiency

The coalition government has taken great pains to assure the public that the NHS budget will be ‘ring-fenced’, and thus not subject to the cuts of 20 to 40 per cent forecast for other Whitehall departments. At the same t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: Men in black: the impact of new contracts on football referees' performance

In the 2001/02 English football season, referees of Premier League matches were paid a salary for the first time. Alex Bryson and colleagues investigate the impact on their performance....Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief: The wage premium of two-footed footballers

The study of football - the clubs, the players, the managers, the referees - is telling us more and more about the operation of labour markets and incentives. Here, Alex Bryson and colleagues show that two-footedness - t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intra-Firm Trade and Product Contractibility (Long Version)

This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade in U.S. imports using detailed countryproduct data. We create a new measure of product contractibility based on the degree of intermediation in international trade...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Valuing School Quality Via School Choice Reform

Among policymakers, educators and economists there remains a strong, sometimes heated, debate on the extent to which good schools matter. This is seen, for instance, in the strong trend towards establishing accountabilit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Paradox of Performance Related Pay Systems: 'Why Do We Keep Adopting Them in the Face of Evidence that they Fail to Motivate?'

This paper considers one of the paradoxes of incentive pay used in Britain’s public services, namely that despite much evidence that it does not motivate employees, it continues to be widely used. It is argued that behin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Institutions and the Management of Human Resources: Incentive Pay Systems in France and Great Britain

Using data from large-scale establishment surveys in Britain and France, we show that incentive pay for non-managers is more widespread in France than in Britain. We explain this finding in terms of the ‘beneficial const...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Interim Rank, Risk Taking and Performance in Dynamic Tournaments

Little is known about the effects of revealing information on relative performance during a dynamic tournament. We empirically study the impact of interim rank on risk taking and performance using data on professionals c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unions and Workplace Performance in Britain and France

Using nationally representative workplace surveys we examine the relationship between unionization and workplace financial performance in Britain and France. We find that union bargaining is detrimental to workplace perf...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Importance of Relative Performance Feedback Information: Evidence from a Natural Experiment using High School Students

We study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on performance under piece-rate incentives. A natural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to test this effe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Understanding the Gender Pay Gap: What's Competition Got to Do with It?

A number of papers have recently argued that men and women have different attitudes and behavioural responses to competition. Laboratory experiments suggest that these gender differences are very large but it is importan...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparing Willingness-to-Pay and Subjective Well-Being in the Context of Non-Market Goods

In order to value non-market goods, economists estimate individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for these goods using revealed or stated preference methods. We compare these conventional approaches with subjective well-bei...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trading Places: Employers, Unions and the Manufacture of Voice

Using nationally representative workplace data for Britain we show that over the last quarter century union voice – especially union-only voice – has been associated with poorer climate, more industrial action, poorer fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Organizational Commitment: Do Workplace Practices Matter?

Using nationally-representative linked employer-employee data for Britain this paper considers whether employers are able to influence the organizational commitment (OC) of their employees through the practices they depl...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Performance Pay and Within-Firm Wage Inequality

This paper examines the impact of performance-related pay on wage differentials within firms. Our theoretical framework predicts that, compared to a fixed pay system, pay schemes based on individual effort increase withi...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...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Students' academic self-perception

Participation rates in higher education differ persistently between some groups in society. Using two British datasets we investigate whether this gap is rooted in students’ mis-perception of their own and other’s abilit...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Overqualification, Job Dissatisfaction and Increasing Dispersion in the Returns to Graduate Education

Increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education is found, using quantile regression. This trend is related to rising overqualification. We distinguish between and validate measures of “Real” and “Formal” overq...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of Private Ownership, Incentives and Local Development Objectives on University Technology Transfer Performance

We study the impact of private ownership, incentive pay and local development objectives on university licensing performance. We develop and test a simple contracting model of technology licensing offices, using new surv...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Incentive Pay Systems and the Management of Human Resources in France and Great Britain

Incentive pay systems have undergone major changes in recent decades. This paper investigates use of incentive pay systems in British and French private sector establishments in 2004, focusing on payment-by-results, meri...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Temporary Agency Workers and Workplace Performance in the Private Sector

Using nationally representative workplace data we identify the correlates of temporary agency working (TAW) in the private sector in Britain and its association with workplace labour productivity and financial performanc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individual Employee Voice: Renegotiation and Performance Management in Public Services

Periodically, the ‘zone of acceptance’ within which management may use its authority to direct employees’ work needs to be adapted to the changing needs of organisations. This article focuses especially on the non-codifi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pay for Performance Where Output is Hard to Measure: the Case of Performance Pay for School Teachers

The introduction of performance-related pay with Performance Management in the state school sector of England and Wales represents a considerable change in the school management system. After 2000, all teachers were subj...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Performance Pay for Teachers: Linking Individual and Organisational Level Targets

The introduction of performance-related pay and performance management schemes in the maintained, state, school sector represents a considerable change in the school management system. This paper combines the results of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Gender Gap in Early Career Wage Growth

In the UK the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but after ten years after labour market entry, there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points. This paper explores the reason for this ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Does Product Market Competition Shape Incentive Contracts?

This paper studies the effect of product market competition on the explicit compensation packages that firms offer to their CEOs, executives and workers. We use a large sample of both traded and non-traded UK firms and e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unions, Performance-Related Pay and Procedural Justice: the Case of Classroom Teachers

Performance-related pay (PRP) and performance management (PM) are now a part of the organizational landscape that unions face in the UK’s public services. While PRP and PM threaten the scope of traditional union bargaini...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can a Work Organization Have An Attitude Problem? The Impact of Workplaces on Employee Attitude and Economic Outcomes

In this study we examine whether a workplace can induce good or bad attitudes among its employees and whether any such ¿workplace attitudes¿ affect economic outcomes. This study analyzes responses of thousands of employe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Corporate Ownership Structure and Performance in Europe

In this paper, we show that ownership structures vary considerably across Europe, and that the dominant form of ownership is not necessarily the most efficient one. These findings are in contradiction to similar research...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Impact of an Innovative Human Resource Function on Firm Performance: the Moderating Role of Financing Strategy

The current study examined the impact of the human resource function and financing strategy on the financial performance of 104 UK manufacturing firms. Hypotheses are drawn from a resource-based perspective on human reso...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Executive Compensation and Product Market Competition

The aim of this paper is to study the effects of product market competition on the explicit compensation packages that firms offer to their executives. In order to measure the net effect of competition we use two differe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unions and Procedural Justice: An Alternative to the 'Common Rule'

Can unions substitute a procedural justice role for their traditional reliance on establishing a ¿common rule¿? The decline of ¿bureaucratic¿ models of employee management and the rise of performance pay and performance ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Matchmaking: the Influence of Monitoring Environments on the Effectiveness of Performance Pay Systems

This study uses cross-section and panel data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey to explore contextual influences on the relationship between performance-related pay (PRP) and organizational performance. Wh...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managerial Ownership and Firm Performance in German Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

This paper studies the effect of managerial ownership on performance and the determinants of managerial ownership for small and medium-sized private companies. We use a panel of around 1300 firms in the German business-r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Performance Pay De-Motivate, and Does It Matter?

The sheer scale and speed of the shift of payment system from time-based salaries to performance-related pay, PRP, in the British public services provides a unique opportunity to test the effects of incentive pay schemes...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why Does Performance Pay De-Motivate: Financial Incentives versus Perfrormance Appraisal

The sheer scale and speed of the shift of payment system from time-based salaries to performance-related pay, PRP, in the British public services provides a unique opportunity to test the effects of incentive pay schemes...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teachers Before the 'Threshold'

During the summer of 2000, the government will introduce a new system of pay and performance management for teachers. The Centre for Economic Performance is conducting a 'before-and-after' panel study of teachers and s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unions and the Sword of Justice: Unions and Pay Systems, Pay Inequality, Pay Discrimination and Low Pay

Dispersion in pay is lower among union members than among non-unionists. This reflects two factors. First, union members and jobs are more homogeneous than their non-union counterparts. Second, union wage policies within...Read more...