Incomes Policy and Wage Differentials

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9720906
AutoresOrley Ashenfelter, Richard Layard
Año1983
Volumen50
Número198
Páginas127
Fecha de publicación1983-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEconomica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2554056
OpenAlexW3123441247
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas1

this paper Contains a simple analysis of the movement of differentials in Britain in this decade. Everyone * We should like to thank J. Altonji, J. Abraham and A. Smith for excellent research assistance, and the Department of Employment for providing privately all figures not derived from published reports of the New Earnings Survey. We are also grateful to F. Bayliss, T. Cavanagh, J. Flemming and A. Shorrocks for valuable comments. The work was financed by the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust. knows that most incomes policies have been explicitly equalising, but many do not know how little equalisation occurred, compared with the equalisation that would have occurred if the policies had been explicitly adhered to. Though the Heath formula of 1 plus 4 per cent did have the full equalising effect it implied, Healey's 6 a week was largely submerged in other changes and caused less than a third of the equalisation implied by the formula. Indeed such mild equalisation as occurred between 1975 and 1977 could well be explained simply by the' reduced inflation rate, which reduced the inequality of instantaneous earnings caused by different groups of workers settling at different times of year. Threshold payments in 1974 seem to have had an enduring effect of about one half of their predicted level. The main force that offset the equalising nature of the threshold formula and the 6 a week was, we believe, the pressure of employers bidding up the relative earnings of the more skilled workers

Economics · Labour economics · Wage · Economic Theory and Policy · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Social Policy and Reform Studies