Costas Meghir

For many helpful comments, we thank (2007)

Sydney Ludvigson, Alexander Michaelides, Orazio Attanasio, Dave Backus, Ben Bernanke, John Y. Campbell, ...

cations of Buffer Stock Saving Behavior. � Updated versions of this paper may be found at

Finance, Investment and Growth (2007)

Wendy Carlin And, Wendy Carlin, Colin Mayer, John Cable, Jeremy Edwards, Günter Franke, ...

This paper examines the relation between the institutional structures of advanced OECD countries and the comparative growth and investment of 27 industries in those countries over the period 1970 to...

Resources and standards in urban schools (2007)

Machin, Stephen, McNally, Sandra, Meghir, Costas

Despite being central to government education policy in many countries, there remains considerable debate about whether resources matter for pupil outcomes. In this paper we look at this question by...

Resources and standards in urban schools (2007)

Machin, Stephen, McNally, Sandra, Meghir, Costas

Despite being central to government education policy in many countries, there remains considerable debate about whether resources matter for pupil outcomes. In this paper we look at this question by...

Resources and standards in urban schools (2007)

Machin, Stephen, McNally, Sandra, Meghir, Costas

Do resources matter? This question remains controversial in the economics of education as many studies find no relationship between school resources and educational outcomes. Yet, improving...

Resources and standards in urban schools (2007)

Machin, Stephen, McNally, Sandra, Meghir, Costas

Do resources matter? This question remains controversial in the economics of education as many studies find no relationship between school resources and educational outcomes. Yet, improving...

Resources and standards in urban schools (2007)

Machin, Stephen, McNally, Sandra, Meghir, Costas

Do resources matter? This question remains controversial in the economics of education as many studies find no relationship between school resources and educational outcomes. Yet, improving...

Maternal Education, Home Environments and the Development of Children and Adolescents (2007)

Carneiro, Pedro, Meghir, Costas, Parey, Matthias

We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children´s cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by...

A New Approach to Estimating the Production Function for Housing ∗ (2007)

Brett Gordon, Holger Sieg, Richard Blundell, Andrew Chesher, George-levi Gayle, Francois Ortalo-magne, ...

support for this research is provided by the NSF SBR-0111630 and SBR-0617844. Dating at least to the classic works of Alonso, Mills, and Muth, the production function for housing has played a central...

Dynamic Models for Policy Evaluation (2005)

Costas Meghir

The evaluation of interventions has become a commonly used policy tool. This

Improving pupil performance in English secondary schools: excellence in cities (2004)

Machin, Stephen, McNally, Sandra, Meghir, Costas

This paper reports on the short run impact of one of the U.K. government’s flagship education policies, the Excellence in Cities (EiC) program. EiC is aimed specifically at alleviating poor student...

Improving pupil performance in English secondary schools: excellence in cities (2004)

Machin, Stephen, McNally, Sandra, Meghir, Costas

This paper reports on the short run impact of one of the U.K. government’s flagship education policies, the Excellence in Cities (EiC) program. EiC is aimed specifically at alleviating poor student...

Demand Estimation with Heterogeneous Consumers and Unobserved Product Characteristics: A Hedonic Approach.” Working Paper no. 10278 (February (2004)

Patrick Bajari, C. Lanier Benkard, Steven Berry, Timothy Bresnahan, Ian Crawford, Hidehiko Ichimura, ...

We reconsider the identification and estimation of Gorman-Lancasterstyle hedonic models of demand for differentiated products in the spirit of Sherwin Rosen. We generalize Rosen’s first stage to...

JEL Code: J31 (2003)

Pedro Carneiro, Edward Vytlacil, Sebastian Gay, Michael Greenstone, Larry Katz, Steve Levitt, ...

This research was supported by NSF 97-09-873, NSF-SES-0099195 and NICHD-40-4043-000-85-261. Carneiro benefited from support from Fundaçao Ciência e Tecnologia and Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian. We...

Education Maintenance Allowance : the first two years : a quantitative evaluation (2002)

Ashworth, Karl, Hardman, Jay, Hartfree, Yvette, Maguire, Sue, Middleton, Sue, Smith, Debbi, ...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR352.pdf

Education Maintenance Allowance : the first two years : a quantitative evaluation (2002)

Ashworth, Karl, Hardman, Jay, Hartfree, Yvette, Maguire, Sue, Middleton, Sue, Smith, Debbi, ...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR352.pdf

to the source. Identification and Inference in Nonlinear Difference-In-Differences Models (2002)

Susan Athey, Guido W. Imbens, David Card, Ester Duflo, Jinyong Hahn, Costas Meghir, ...

This paper develops an alternative approach to the widely used Difference-In-Difference (DID) method for evaluating the effects of policy changes. In contrast to the standard approach, we introduce a...

The effect of a social experiment in education (2001)

Meghir, Costas, Palme, Marten

The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education...

The effect of a social experiment in education (2001)

Meghir, Costas, Palme, Marten

The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education...

Education Maintenance Allowance : the first year : a quantitative evaluation (2001)

Ashworth, Karl, Hardman, Jay, Liu, Woon-Chia, Maguire, Sue, Middleton, Sue, Dearden, Lorraine, ...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR257.pdf

Education Maintenance Allowance : the first year : a quantitative evaluation (2001)

Ashworth, Karl, Hardman, Jay, Liu, Woon-Chia, Maguire, Sue, Middleton, Sue, Dearden, Lorraine, ...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR257.pdf

The Working Behavior of Young People in Rural Cote d'Ivoire (1992)

Alessie, Rob, Baker, Paul, Blundell, Richard, Heady, Christopher, Meghir, Costas

One of the major features of structural adjustment is an attempt to reallocate labor—and hence output—through changes in relative prices. This article assesses how price changes affect the...

Collective Labour Supply: Heterogeneity and Non-Participation

Blundell, Richard William, Chiappori, Pierre-André, Magnac, Thierry, Meghir, Costas

We present identification and estimation results for the 'collective' model of labour supply in which there are discrete choices, censoring of hours and non-participation in employment. We derive the...

Collective Labour Supply: Heterogeneity and Nonparticipation

Richard Blundell, Pierre-André Chiappori, Thierry Magnac, Costas Meghir

We present identification and estimation results for the "collective" model of labour supply in which there are discrete choices, censoring of hours and nonparticipation in employment. We derive the...

Evaluating the Employment Impact of a Mandatory Job Search Program

Richard Blundell, Monica Costa Dias, Costas Meghir, John Van Reenen

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...

Changes in the Distribution of Male and Female Wages Accounting for Employment Composition Using Bounds

Blundell, Richard, Gosling, Amanda, Ichimura, Hidehiko, Meghir, Costas

This paper examines changes in the distribution of wages using bounds to allow for the impact of non-random selection into work. We show that bounds constructed without any economic or statistical...

Crime and economic incentives

Steve Machin, Costas Meghir

We explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates. We use data on the police force areas of...

Income variance dynamics and heterogenity

Costas Meghir, Luigi Pistaferri

Recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance. In this paper the assumption of...

Estimating labour supply responses using tax reforms

Richard Blundell, Alan Duncan, Costas Meghir

The 1980s' tax reforms and the changing dispersion of wages offer one of the best opportunities yet to estimate labour supply effects. Nevertheless, changing sample composition, aggregate shocks, the...

Wages, experience and seniority

Christian Dustmann, Costas Meghir

This paper develops and estimates a human capital model of wage growth based on learning by doing. Learning by doing rates are assumed to be heterogeneous and firms offer different career structures...

Instrumental variables, local instrumental variables and control functions

Jean-Pierre Florens, James Heckman, Costas Meghir, Edward Vytlacil

We consider the identification of the average treatment effect in models with continuous endogenous variables whose impact is heterogeneous. We derive a testable restriction that allows us to assess...

Active labour market policy vs employment tax credits: lessons from recent UK reforms

Blundell, Richard, Meghir, Costas

Many welfare-to-work programs in both North America and Europe are directed at making work pay for the low skilled. This paper identifies two alternative policies that are motivated by this same...

Instrumental variables, local instrumental variables and control functions

Jean-Pierre Florens, James Heckman, Costas Meghir, Edward Vytlacil

We consider the identification and estimation of certain parameters of interest in models with continuous endogenous variables whose impact is heterogeneous. We provide a test that allows us to...

Selection Criteria for a Microeconometric Model of Labour Supply

Richard Blundell, Costas Meghir

In this paper we develop a set of selection criteria for the specification of a female labour supply model for microdata. We look at both economic and statistical criteria in assessing various...

Unemployment and Female Labour Supply

Richard Blundell, John Ham, Costas Meghir

Although the standard neoclassical model of female labour supply behaviour usually allows for the impact of demographic changes on value of female time in the household, the complexities of the tax...

Instrumental variables, local instrumental variables and control functions

Jean-Pierre Florens, James Heckman, Costas Meghir, Edward Vytlacil

We consider the identification of the average treatment effect in models with continuous endogenous variables whose impact is heterogeneous. We derive a testable restriction that allows us to assess...

Evaluating the employment impact of a mandatory job search assistance program

Richard Blundell, Monica Costa Dias, Costas Meghir, John Van Reenen

This paper is an evaluation of the British labor market program the "New Deal for the Young Unemployed" using administrative panel data on individuals between 1982 and 1999. This mandatory program...

Humps and bumps in lifetime consumption

Orazio Attanasio, James Banks, Costas Meghir, Guglielmo Weber

There is much debate over whether the life-cycle model of consumption can explain consumption growth patterns patterns observed in household level data sources. We argue that once one departs from...

Dynamic models for policy evaluation

Costas Meghir

The evaluation of interventions has become a commonly used policy tool, which is frequently adopted to improve the transparency and effectiveness of public policy. However, evaluation methods based...

Child education and work choices in the presence of a conditional cash transfer programme in rural Colombia

Orazio Attanasio, Emla Fitzsimons, Ana Gomez, Diana Lopez, Costas Meghir, Alice Mesnard

This research is part of a large evaluation effort, undertaken by a consortium formed by IFS, Econometria and SEI, which has considered the effects of Familias en Acción on a variety of outcomes one...

Wages, Experience and Seniority

Christian Dustmann, Costas Meghir

In this paper we study the sources of wage growth. We identify the contribution to such growth of general, sector specific and firm specific human capital. Our results are interpretable within the...

Changes in the distribution of male and female wages accounting for employment composition using bounds

Richard Blundell, Amanda Gosling, Hidehiko Ichimura, Costas Meghir

This paper examines changes in the distribution of wages using bounds to allow for the impact of non-random selection into work. We show that bounds constructed without any economic or statistical...

"Changes in the Distribution of Male and Female Wages Accounting for Employment Composition Using Bounds"

Richard Blundell, Amanda Gosling, Hidehiko Ichimura, Costas Meghir

This paper examines changes in the distribution of wages using bounds to allow for the impact of non-random selection into work. We show that worst case bounds can be informative. However, since...

Child Education and Work Choices in the Presence of a Conditional Cash Transfer Programme in Rural Colombia

Attanasio, Orazio, Fitzsimons, Emla, Gomez, Ana, Lopez, Diana, Meghir, Costas, Mesnard, Alice

The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme implemented in rural areas in Colombia in 2002, on school enrolment and child labour. Using a...

Career Progression and Formal versus On-the-Job Training

Jérôme Adda, Christian Dustmann, Costas Meghir, Jean-Marc Robin

We develop a dynamic discrete choice model of training choice, employment and wage growth, allowing for job mobility, in a world where wages depend on firm-worker matches, as well as experience and...

Improving Pupil Performance in English Secondary Schools: Excellence in Cities

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally, Costas Meghir

This paper reports on the short run impact of one of the U.K. government's flagship education policies, the Excellence in Cities (EiC) program. EiC is aimed specifically at alleviating poor student...

Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital

Jérôme Vandenbussche, Philippe Aghion, Costas Meghir

Economic growth, Human capital, Imitation, Innovation, Convergence, P: I20, O30, O40,

Career Progression and Formal versus On-the-Job Training

Adda, Jerome, Dustmann, Christian, Meghir, Costas, Robin, Jean-Marc

We develop a dynamic discrete choice model of training choice, employment and wage growth, allowing for job mobility, in a world where wages depend on firm-worker matches, as well as experience and...

Wage Risk and Employment Risk Over the Life Cycle

Low, Hamish, Meghir, Costas, Pistaferri, Luigi

This paper decomposes the sources of risk to income that individuals face over their lifetimes. We distinguish productivity risk from employment risk and identify the components of each using the...

Resources and Standards in Urban Schools

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally, Costas Meghir

Despite being central to government education policy in many countries, there remains considerable debate about whether resources matter for pupil outcomes. In this paper we look at this question by...

Collective Labor Supply with Children

Richard Blundell, Pierre-André Chiappori, Costas Meghir

We extend the collective model of household behavior to allow for the existence of public consumption. We show how this model allows the analysis of welfare consequences of policies aimed at changing...

Maternal Education, Home Environments and the Development of Children and Adolescents

Carneiro, Pedro, Meghir, Costas, Parey, Matthias

We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioural problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by...

Labour Supply and Taxes

Meghir, Costas, Phillips, David

In this paper we provide an overview of the literature relating labour supply to taxes and welfare benefits with a focus on presenting the empirical consensus. We begin with a basic continuous hours...

Dynamic Investment Models and the Firm's Financial Policy

Stephen Bond, Costas Meghir

The aim of this paper is to characterize the empirical implications for dynamic investment models of the hierarchy of finance model of corporate finance and to test these implications using firm...

Pension Incentives and the Pattern of Early Retirement

Richard Blundell, Costas Meghir, Sarah Smith

This mix of state and private pension provision in the United Kingdom provides a rare degree of variation in pension incentives for retirement. Using a sample of individuals from the UK Retirement...

Unemployment and Female Labour Supply.

Blundell, Richard, Ham, John, Meghir, Costas

The definition of labor force participation in the standard labor supply model stands in sharp contrast to that used in compiling the labor force statistics. In standard labor supply models, only...

Human capital investment: the returns from education and training to the individual, the firm and the economy

Richard Blundell, Lorraine Dearden, Costas Meghir, Barbara Sianesi

This paper provides a non-technical review of the evidence on the returns to education and training for the individual, the firm and the economy at large. It begins by reviewing the empirical work...

Career progression and formal versus on-the-job training

Jerome Adda, Christian Dustmann, Costas Meghir, Jean-Marc Robin

We develop a dynamic discrete choice model of training choice, employment and wage growth, allowing for job mobility, in a world where wages depend on firm-worker matches, as well as experience and...

Child education and work choices in the presence of a conditional cash transfer programme in rural Colombia

Orazio Attanasio, Emla Fitzsimons, Ana Gomez, Diana Lopez, Costas Meghir, Alice Mesnard

The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme implemented in rural areas in Colombia in 2002, on school enrolment and child labour. Using a...

Educational reform, ability and family background

Costas Meghir, Mårten Palme

In this paper we evaluate the impact of a major school reform, that took place in the 1950s in Sweden, on educational attainment and earnings. The reform, which has many common elements with reforms...

A retrospective on Friedman's theory of permanent income

Costas Meghir

Friedman’s book on the “Consumption Function” is one of the great works of Economics demonstrating how the interplay between theoretical ideas and data analysis could lead to major policy...

Ability, parental background and educational policy: empirical evidence from a social experiment

Costas Meghir, Mårten Palme

Following the great expansion of secondary education in the United States between 1910 and 1940, Sweden was one of the first Western European countries to attempt such an expansion by increasing the...

The effect of a social experiment in education

Costas Meghir, Mårten Palme

The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability reamin important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education...

Wages, experience and seniority

Christian Dustmann, Costas Meghir

In this paper we study the sources of wage growth. We identify the contribution to such growth of general, sector specific and firm specific human capital. Our results are interpretable within the...

The effect of school quality on educational attainment and wages

Lorraine Dearden, Javier Ferri, Costas Meghir

The paper examines the effects of school pupil-teacher ratios and type of school on educational attainment and wages using the British National Child Development survey (NCDS). The NCDS is a panel...

Assessing the effect of schooling on earnings using a social experiment

Costas Meghir, Mårten Palme

The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education...

Collective labour supply: heterogeneity and non-participation

Richard Blundell, André Chiappori, Thierry Magnac, Costas Meghir

In this paper we develop the collective labour supply framework to allow for corner solutions and nonparticipation in employment.We derive conditions for the complete non parametric identification of...

The changing distribution of male wages in the UK, 1966-1992

Amanda Gosling, Steve Machin, Costas Meghir

This paper uses microeconomic data from the UK Family Expenditure Surveys (FES) and the General Household Surveys (GHS) to describe and explain changes in the distribution of male wages. Since the...

Moment conditions for dynamic panel data models with multiplicative individual effects in the conditional variance

Costas Meghir, Frank Windmeijer

Moment conditions are derived for dynamic linear panel data models with linear individual specific effects in the mean and multiplicative individual effects in the conditional ARCH type variance...

Labour market transitions and retirement of men in the UK

Costas Meghir, Whitehouse, E

We study transitions in and out of work for men over the age of forty in order to investigate the principal determinants of retirement age. We apply non-parametric techniques to describe the exit to...

Collective labour supply with children

Pierre-André Chiappori, Richard Blundell, Costas Meghir

We extend the collective model of household behavior to allow for the existence of public consumption. Under a separability assumption, we show that the observation of the labor supplies and the...

Wage risk and employment risk over the life cycle

Hamish Low, Costas Meghir, Luigi Pistaferri

This paper decomposes the sources of risk to income that individuals face over their lifetimes. We distinguish productivity risk from employment risk and identify the components of each using the...

Labor Supply Models: Unobserved Heterogeneity, Nonparticipation and Dynamics

Blundell, Richard, MaCurdy, Thomas, Meghir, Costas, J.J. Heckman, E.E. Leamer

This chapter is concerned with the identification and estimation of models of labor supply. The focus is on the key issues that arise from unobserved heterogeneity, nonparticipation and dynamics. We...

Education subsidies and school drop-out rates

Lorraine Dearden, Carl Emmerson, Christine Frayne, Costas Meghir

This paper evaluates whether means-tested grants paid to secondary students are an effective way of reducing the proportion of school dropouts. We look at this problem using matching techniques on a...

Resources and Standards in Urban Schools

Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally, Costas Meghir

Despite being central to government education policy in many countries, there remains considerable debate about whether resources matter for pupil outcomes. In this paper we look at this question by...

Labour market programmes and labour market outcomes: a study of the Swedish active labour market interventions

Adda, Jérôme, Costa Dias, Mònica, Meghir, Costas, Sianesi, Barbara

This paper assesses the impact of Swedish welfare-to-work programmes on labour market performance including wages, labour market status, unemployment duration and future welfare-to-work...

Maternal education, home environments and the development of children and adolescents

Pedro Carneiro, Costas Meghir, Matthias Parey

There is a striking increase in inequality in children's home environments over the last 50 years (McLanahan, 2004). These are measured as differences in age of mothers of young children (below 5),...

Maternal Education, Home Environments and the Development of Children and Adolescents

Pedro Carneiro, Costas Meghir, Matthias Parey

We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by...

Changes in the Distribution of Male and Female Wages Accounting for Employment Composition Using Bounds

Richard Blundell, Amanda Gosling, Hidehiko Ichimura, Costas Meghir

This paper examines changes in the distribution of wages using bounds to allow for the impact of nonrandom selection into work. We show that worst case bounds can be informative. However, because...

The Changing Distribution of Male Wages in the U.K.

Gosling, Amanda, Machin, Stephen, Meghir, Costas

This paper uses microeconomic data from the U.K. Family Expenditure Surveys (FES) and the General Household Surveys (GHS) to describe and explain changes in the distribution of male wages. Since the...

Consumer Demand and the Life-Cycle Allocation of Household Expenditures.

Blundell, Richard, Browning, Martin, Meghir, Costas

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the parameters of household preferences that determine the allocation of goods within the period and over the life cycle, using micro data. In doing so, the...

Dynamic Investment Models and the Firm's Financial Policy.

Bond, Stephen, Meghir, Costas

In this paper, the authors investigate the sensitivity of investment to the availability of internal funds using the hierarchy of finance approach to corporate finance. They characterize the...

Female Labour Supply and On-the-Job Search: An Empirical Model Estimated Using Complementary Data Sets.

Arellano, Manuel, Meghir, Costas

The authors develop an empirical model of labor supply that is consistent with on-the-job search and that is identified and estimated by combining two data sets: the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey,...

Collective Labour Supply: Heterogeneity and Non-Participation

RICHARD BLUNDELL, PIERRE-ANDRE CHIAPPORI, THIERRY MAGNAC, COSTAS MEGHIR

We present identification and estimation results for the "collective" model of labour supply in which there are discrete choices, censoring of hours, and non-participation in employment. We derive...

Assessing the Effect of Schooling on Earnings Using a Social Experiment

Costas Meghir, Marten Palme

The implementation of the 1950 Swedish comprehensive school reform was preceded by a unique social experiment. During this experiment between 1949 and 1962 the new school system was implemented in...

Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity

Costas Meghir, Luigi Pistaferri

Recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance. In this paper the assumption of...

Estimating Labor Supply Responses Using Tax Reforms

Richard Blundell, Alan Duncan, Costas Meghir

The 1980s tax reforms and the changing dispersion of wages offer one of the best opportunities yet to estimate labor supply effects. Nevertheless, changing sample composition, aggregate shocks, the...

Intertemporal Nonseparability or Borrowing Restrictions? A Disaggregate Analysis Using a U.S. Consumption Panel.

Meghir, Costas, Weber, Guglielmo

The authors propose a method to test for liquidity constraints that relies on using the within period marginal rate of substitution condition as a benchmark to evaluate the intertemporal Euler...

The Effects of Male and Female Labor Supply on Commodity Demands.

Browning, Martin, Meghir, Costas

The authors examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of demands from labor supply. Using data on individual...

Savings and Labor-Market Transitions.

Blundell, Richard, Magnac, Thierry, Meghir, Costas

A model is developed that allows for a lay-off rate and a job arrival rate in the intertemporal choice of consumption and labor market state. The identification of such a model is established without...

A Retrospective on Friedman's Theory of Permanent Income

Costas Meghir

Friedman's book on the consumption function is one of the great works of Economics demonstrating how the interplay between theoretical ideas and data analysis can lead to major policy implications....

The labour market impact of the working families’ tax credit

Richard Blundell, Alan Duncan, Julian McCrae, Costas Meghir

In October 1999, the working families’ tax credit (WFTC) replaced family credit as the main package of in-work support for families with children. Among a range of stated aims, the WFTC is intended...

Financial constraints and company investment

Steve Bond, Costas Meghir

The question we address in this paper is whether the investment spending of at least some firms is affected by the availability of internally generated finance (retained earnings), reflecting some...

Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital

Jérôme Vandenbussche, Philippe Aghion, Costas Meghir

We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled labor...

Savings and labour market transitions

Richard Blundell, Thierry Magnac, Costas Meghir

A model is developed that allows for a layoff rate and a job arrival rate in the intertemporal choice of consumption and labor market state. The identification of such a model is established without...

Job creation, technological innovation and adjustment costs

Costas Meghir, Annette Ryan, John Van Reenen

This paper compares the employment behaviour of innovative firms with those that are less technologically advanced. Innovation (by a company or its rivals) can affect job creation along many...

Instrumental variables, local instrumental variables and control functions

Jean-Pierre Florens, James Heckman, Costas Meghir, Edward Vytlacil

We consider the identification of the average treatment effect in models with continuous endogenous variables whose impact is heterogeneous. We derive a testable restriction that allows us to assess...

Wage risk and employment risk over the life-cycle

Luigi Pistaferri, Hamish Low, Costas Meghir

We define the distinction between productivity and employment risk and estimate the components of risk using wage and mobility data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We then calibrate a model...

Collective Labor Supply: Heterogeneity and Nonparticipation

Richard Blundell, Pierre-Andre Chiappori, Thierry Magnac, Costas Meghir

In this paper we extend the "collective" model of labour supply developed by Chiappori (1988) to allow for discrete choices, censoring and nonparticipation in employment. We derive the collective...

Assessing the Effect of Schooling on Earnings Using a Social Experiment

Meghir, Costas, Palme, Mårten

The implementation of the 1950 Swedish comprehensive school reform was preceded by a unique social experiment. During this experiment between 1949 and 1962 the new school system was implemented in...

The Effect of a Social Experiment in Education

Meghir, Costas, Palme, Marten

The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education...

Selection Criteria for a Microeconometric Model of Labour Supply

Blundell, Richard William, Meghir, Costas

In this paper we develop a set of selection criteria for the specification of a female labour supply model for microdata. We look at both economic and statistical criteria in assessing various...

Unemployment and Female Labour Supply

Blundell, Richard William, Ham, John, Meghir, Costas

Although the standard neoclassical model of female labour supply behaviour usually allows for the impact of demographic changes on value of female time in the household, the complexities of the tax...

Wages, Experience and Seniority

Dustmann, Christian, Meghir, Costas

This paper develops and estimates a human capital model of wage growth based on learning by doing. Learning by doing rates are assumed to be heterogeneous and firms offer different career structures...

Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity

Meghir, Costas, Pistaferri, Luigi

Recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance. In this Paper the assumption of...

Evaluating the Employment Impact of a Mandatory Job Search Programme

Blundell, Richard William, Costa Dias, Monica, Meghir, Costas, Van Reenen, John

This Paper exploits area-based piloting and age-related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labour market program – the New Deal for Young People in the UK. A central focus is on...

Changes in the Distribution of Male and Female Wages Accounting for Employment Composition Using Bounds

Blundell, Richard William, Gosling, Amanda, Ichimura, Hidehiko, Meghir, Costas

This Paper examines changes in the distribution of wages using bounds to allow for the impact of non-random selection into work. We show that bounds constructed without any economic or statistical...

Growth, Distance to Frontier and Composition of Human Capital

Aghion, Philippe, Meghir, Costas, Vandenbussche, Jérôme

We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled...

The Effect Of School Quality On Educational Attainment And Wages

Lorraine Dearden, Javier Ferri, Costas Meghir

The paper examines the effects of pupil-teacher ratios and type of school on educational attainment and wages using the British National Child Development Survey (NCDS). The NCDS is a panel survey...

Identification of Treatment Effects Using Control Functions in Models with Continuous, Endogenous Treatment and Heterogeneous Effects

Jean-Pierre Florens, James J. Heckman, Costas Meghir, Edward J. Vytlacil

We use the control function approach to identify the average treatment effect and the effect of treatment on the treated in models with a continuous endogenous regressor whose impact is...

Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle

Low, Hamish, Meghir, Costas, Pistaferri, Luigi

We specify a structural life-cycle model of consumption, labour supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions that allows us to distinguish between different sources of risk and to...

Labour supply and taxes

Costas Meghir, David Phillips

In this paper we provide an overview of the literature relating labour supply to taxes and welfare benefits with a focus on presenting the empirical consensus. We begin with a basic continuous hours...

Humps and Bumps in Lifetime Consumption

Orazio P. Attanasio, James Banks, Costas Meghir, Guglielmo Weber

In this paper we argue that once one departs from the simple classroom example, or `stripped down life-cycle model,' the empirical model for consumption growth can be made flexible enough to fit the...

Training Disadvantaged Youth in Latin America: Evidence from a Randomized Trial

Orazio Attanasio, Adriana Kugler, Costas Meghir

Youth unemployment in Latin America is exceptionally high, as much as 50% among the poor. Vocational training may be the best chance to help unemployed young people at the bottom of the income...

The Evolution of Wages in the United Kingdom: Evidence from Micro Data.

Meghir, Costas, Whitehouse, Edward

The authors use data on male employees from the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey for the years 1968-86 to investigate the behavior of wages over time and across cohorts. They find that differentials...

Evaluating In-Work Benefit Reform: The Working Families Tax Credit in the U.K.

Richard Blundell, Alan Duncan, Julian McCrae, Costas Meghir

In this paper we examine the labour market impact of the proposed new earned income tax credit - Working Families Tax Credit - in the U.K. Family labour supply behaviour is modelled as a discrete...

Changes in Consumption at Retirement

Emma Aguila, Orazio P. Attanasio, Costas Meghir

Previous empirical literature has found a sharp decline in consumption during the first years of retirement implying that individuals do not save enough for their retirement. This phenomenon has been...

Wage risk and employment risk over the life cycle

Hamish Low, Costas Meghir, Luigi Pistaferri

We specify a structural life-cycle model of consumption, labour supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions that allows us to distinguish between different sources of risk and to...

Career progression and formal versus on-the-job training

Jerome Adda, Christian Dustmann, Costas Meghir, Jean-Marc Robin

We model the choice of individuals to follow or not apprenticeship training and their subsequent career. We use German administrative data, which records education, labour market transitions and...

Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle

Hamish Low, Costas Meghir, Luigi Pistaferri

We specify a structural life-cycle model of consumption, labour supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions that allows us to distinguish between different sources of risk and to...

Subsidizing Vocational Training for Disadvantaged Youth in Developing Countries: Evidence from a Randomized Trial

Attanasio, Orazio, Kugler, Adriana, Meghir, Costas

This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized training program for disadvantaged youth introduced in Colombia in 2005. This randomized trial offers a unique opportunity to examine the impact of...

Crime and Economic Incentives

Stephen Machin, Costas Meghir

We explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates. We use data on the police force areas of...