Results

Blog

Vox EU:

Company wage policy in a low-wage labour market

In many countries, minimum wage policies allow employers to pay young workers less than adults, and the UK is now debating how fast to phase out its lower youth minima. But do employers actually use the room that age-spe...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal: Forthcoming

The Immigration Surplus Revisited

We extend the immigration surplus results of Borjas (1995). In a closed competitive constant-returns economy, we show that an influx of migrants (holding their skill mix fixed) must increase the total real income of nati...Read more...

Blog

Banque de France:

Generative AI: the first changes in the labour market are affecting young people

Since the end of 2022, permanent contract hires among young people have fallen more markedly in occupations where tasks can most easily be performed or assisted by generative AI. Contract terminations are also declining,...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Monopsony and the wage effects of migration

If labour markets are competitive, migration can only affect native wages via marginal products. But under imperfect competition, migration may also increase wage mark-downs ? if firms have greater monopsony power over m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade diversion and labor market outcomes

In 2018 and 2019, the US administration increased tariffs on imports from China. Did these tariffs lead to more US imports from other countries such as Mexico? Using highly disaggregated data on the universe of Mexican f...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Advice to young women economists: learn to say no and protect your time

How are women making their mark in economics? To celebrate Women's History Month, Swati Dhingra shares her experiences, from India to British academia and the Bank of England. It took her a while to learn to say no and p...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Ethnic minority and migrant pay gaps over the life-cycle

It is well-known that ethnic minority and migrant workers have lower average pay than the White UK-born workforce. However, we know much less about how these gaps vary over the life-cycle because of data limitations. We ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Transitional costs and the decline in coal: worker-level evidence

Workers' outside options play a central role in determining the transitional costs of labor demand shocks. Using comprehensive administrative data, we examine the worker-level effects of the decline of coal - a regionall...Read more...

Blog

The Conversation:

Minimum wage for South African farm workers: study shows 2013 hike helped reduce poverty even though compliance was poor

Minimum wage policies are typically aimed at reducing poverty. Yet there is little direct evidence of this effect, especially in developing countries. And none for South Africa, write Ihsaan Bassier and Vimal Ranchhod....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Does providing gig workers with unemployment insurance create a moral hazard?

Non-standard workers doing short-term, flexible jobs are a growing segment of the labour force, which poses difficult questions. Is it good policy to provide unemployment insurance to them? Do people engage in gig work b...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Responsible sourcing? Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) increasingly impose "Responsible Sourcing" (RS) standards on their suppliers worldwide, including requirements on worker compensation, benefits and working conditions. Are these policies ...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

The gender reveal: the effect of sons on young fathers' criminal behavior and labor market activities

Based on New Zealand's administrative court charges data, we document child gender-specific differences in future criminal behavior of young fathers. The deterrent impact of having a son on the future likelihood of recei...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Human Computer Studies:

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to assess current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How does working from home during Covid-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to access current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

JUE insight: How much does Covid-19 increase with mobility? Evidence from New York and four other US cities

How effective are restrictions on mobility in limiting COVID-19 spread? Using zip code data across five U.S. cities, we estimate that total cases per capita decrease by 19% for every ten percentage point fall in mobility...Read more...

Journal article

Human-Computer Interaction:

How does working from home during Covid-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

In this research we explore the effects of the forced Work-from-home arrangement during the Covid-19 pandemic on managers. We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted h...Read more...

Journal article

The Lancet Public Health :

Policy stringency and mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis of data from 15 countries

To date, public health policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated on the basis of their ability to reduce transmission and minimise economic harm. We aimed to assess the association between COV...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... City of dreams no more: Covid-19 in urban India

The pandemic has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. A CEP report by Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli calls for a national w...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

City of dreams no more: the impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in India

Many developing economies have large informal sectors and growing urban youth populations, who lack basic social protections at work. The CEP surveyed 8,500 workers aged 18 to 40 in urban India to understand their experi...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...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring the gains from labor specialization

We estimate the productivity effects of labor specialization using a judicial environment that offers a quasi-experimental setting well suited to this purpose. Judges in this environment are randomly assigned many differ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Location, search costs and youth unemployment: experimental evidence from transport subsidies

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of jobseekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intensi...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

The persistence of local joblessness

Differences in employment-population ratios across US commuting zones have persisted for many decades. We claim these disparities represent real gaps in economic opportunity for individuals of fixed characteristics. Thes...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Wage flexibility and employment fluctuations: evidence from the housing sector

Many economists suspect that downward nominal wage rigidities in ongoing labour contracts are an important source of employment fluctuations over the business cycle, but there is little direct empirical evidence on this ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

How local are labor markets? Evidence from a spatial job search model

This paper models the optimal search strategies of the unemployed across space to characterize local labor markets. Our methodology allows for linkages between numerous areas, while preserving tractability. We estimate 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...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Quantifying the sources of firm heterogeneity

We develop and structurally estimate a model of heterogeneous multiproduct firms that can be used to decompose the firm-size distribution into the contributions of costs, "appeal" (quality or taste), markups, and product...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage flexibility and employment fluctuations: evidence from the housing sector

Many economists suspect that downward nominal wage rigidities in ongoing labor contracts are an important source of employment fluctuations over the business cycle but there is little direct empirical evidence on this co...Read more...

Journal article

Science:

Inequality in mortality decreased among the young while increasing for older adults, 1990-2010

Many recent studies point to increasing inequality in mortality in the United States over the past 20 years. These studies often use mortality rates in middle and old age. We used poverty level rankings of groups of U.S....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

To avoid creating a `lost generation?, with perhaps a fifth of all 18 year olds unemployed and outside training, a new push on apprenticeships would help

With record numbers of young people not gaining university places, the viability of apprenticeships could make a huge difference in preventing a `lost generation? out of touch with the labour market. Dr Hilary Steedman o...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

Do Workers' Remittances Reduce the Probability of Current Account Reversals?

The paper combines the literature on financial crises in emerging markets and developing economies with that on international migrations by investigating whether the increasingly large flows of workers? remittances can h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Self Selection of Migrant Workers Revisited

Work of low-skilled migrant workers from developing countries in developed economies is a growing phenomenon and a key political and economic issue. An extensive literature has found (for the most part) that these worker...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Evaluating the employment impact of a mandatory job search program

This paper exploits area-based piloting and age-related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labor market program-the New Deal for Young People in the U.K. A central focus is on substitution/displacement ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cross-Generation Correlations of Union Status For Young People in Britain

In this paper we investigate whether young people whose fathers are union members are themselves more likely to join a union. The work builds upon a large social science literature on intergenerational mobility that, to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Minimum Wages and On-the-Job Training

Becker's theory of human capital predicts that minimum wages should reduce training investments for affected workers because they prevent these workers from taking wage cuts necessary to finance training. In contrast, i...Read more...