Results

Journal article

Journal of Development Economics:

The firm-pay gender gap and formal sector churn over the life cycle

We find that women sorting into lower paying firms explains nearly half of the gender pay gap in South Africa. Using matched employer-employee panel data covering the universe of formal workers, we show sorting varies co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Meaning at work

We evaluate a firm's unusual, worker-centered, solution to the agency problem: enabling employees to reduce the cost of effort rather than pushing them with performance rewards. We randomize the roll-out of the firm's "D...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Why the social care visa had to go

One of the changes to the UK work migration regime announced in this week's White Paper was that care workers could no longer be hired directly from abroad. To some this return to the pre-2021 system was an act of econom...Read more...

Journal article

Demography:

Population growth, immigration, and labor market dynamics

This article provides a first synthesis of population flows and labor market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations. We devise a novel dynamic accounting methodology that integrates population flows from t...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Scars of war

Deaths of soldiers in wartime naturally have a powerful impact on the communities from which they come. Research by Edward Pinchbeck, Felipe Carozzi and Luca Repetto reveals how losses in the first world war have reverbe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Scars of war: the legacy of WW1 deaths on civic capital and combat motivation

What drives soldiers to risk their life in combat? We show that the legacy of war creates lasting conditions that encourage younger generations to take greater risks when fighting for their country. Using individual-leve...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Robot adoption, worker-firm sorting and wage inequality: evidence from administrative panel data

Leveraging the geographic dimension of a large administrative panel on employer-employee contracts, we study the impact of robot adoption on wage inequality through changes in worker-firm assortativity. Using recently de...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collective bargaining and spillovers in local labor markets

How does collective bargaining affect the broader wage structure? How are such spillovers transmitted? I present a model where firms with wage-setting power that are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, but a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Population growth, immigration and labour market dynamics

This paper examines the role of population flows on labour market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations in the United Kingdom. Population flows are large, and cyclical, driven first by the maturation of b...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

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

Trade and deskilling: how the post-referendum sterling depreciation hurt workers

The unexpected result of the Brexit referendum, working through the rapid depreciation of sterling, had a sizable negative impact on UK workers. New CEP work by Rui Costa, Swati Dhingra and Stephen Machin shows that the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Team adaptation

We model an organization as a team choosing between a status quo project and a potentially superior alternative. We show that the members? concern for each other?s motivation leads to a lack of communication, resulting i...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Urban Wage Growth Premium: Sorting or Learning?

This paper is concerned with the urban wage premium and addresses two central issues about which the field has not yet reached a consensus. First, the extent to which sorting of high ability individuals into urban areas ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Decision-making and implementation in teams

We use a mechanism?design approach to study a team whose members choose a joint project and exert individual efforts to execute it. Members have private information about the qualities of alternative projects. Informatio...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Role of Worker Flows in the Dynamics and Distribution of UK Unemployment

Unemployment varies substantially over time and across subgroups of the labour market. Worker flows among labour market states act as key determinants of this variation. We examine how the structure of unemployment acros...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managers' Mobility, Trade Status and Wages

This paper investigates whether the arrival of managers with export experience, i.e. experience acquired through participation in the export activity of previous employers, is related to firms' international trade status...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Higher Wages Come at a Price?

Using linked employer-employee data for Britain we find job satisfaction and job anxiety are negatively correlated but higher wages are associated with higher job satisfaction and higher job anxiety. However, we observe ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Slip Sliding Away: Further Union Decline in Germany and Britain

This paper presents the first comparative analysis of the decline in collective bargaining in two European countries where that decline has been most pronounced. Using workplace-level data and a common model, we present ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Extent of Collective Bargaining and Workplace Representation: Transitions between States and their Determinants. A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Great Britain

Industrial relations are in flux in many nations, perhaps most notably in Germany and Britain. That said, comparatively little is known in any detail of the changing pattern of the institutions of collective bargaining a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Motivation and Sorting in Open Source Software Innovation

This paper studies the role of intrinsic motivation, reputation, and reciprocity in driving open source software innovation. Unlike previous literature based on survey data, we exploit the observed pattern of contributio...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

U.S. Labor Market Dynamics Revisited

The picture of U.S. labor market dynamics is opaque. Empirical studies have yielded contradictory findings and debates have emerged regarding their implications. This paper aims at clarifying the picture, which is import...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Search and Matching in Macroeconomics

The labor search and matching model plays a growing role in macroeconomic analysis. This paper provides a critical, selective survey of the literature. Four fundamental questions are explored: how are unemployment, job v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gross Worker Flows in the Presence of Informal Labor Markets. The Mexican Experience 1987-2002

This paper applies recent advances in the study of labor market dynamics to a representative developing country with a large unregulated of ?informal? sector, Mexico. It finds, first, that the formal salaried sector show...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Voice Do British Workers Want?

The problems/need for representation and participation reported by workers vary across workplaces and by types of jobs. Workers with greater workplace needs are more desirous of unions but their preferences are fine-grai...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Disengagement 14-16: Context and Evidence

This paper presents an overview of our current state of knowledge regarding poor motivation of 14-16 year old school pupils in the UK. A number of experts in the field from a variety of disciplines presented papers on th...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

Jobs, Workers and Changes in Earnings Dispersion

The 'fractal' nature of the rise in earnings dispersion is one of its key features and remains a puzzle. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on the causes of changes in earnings dispersion, focusing on the role o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Tenures that Shook the World: Worker Turnover in Russia, Poland and Britain

We study worker turnover in a transition economy to investigate to what extent the length of time a worker has been employed by a firm shapes the turnover process. Using data from the Polish Labour Force Survey and The R...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender, Motivation, Experience and Wages

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991-97 this paper investigates the structure of the female wage equation and the gender wage differential. The discriminatory portion of the gender wage differential i...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...