In this paper we evaluate the success of policies that were implemented in the 1980s that were designed to improve the workings of the UK labour market. Our primary conclusion is that the Thatcherite reforms succeeded in their goals of weakening union power; may have marginally increased employment and wage responsiveness to market conditions and may have increased self-employment. They were accompanied by a substantial improvement in the labour market position of women. But the reforms failed to improve the responsiveness of real wages to unemployment; they were associated with a slower transition from nonemployment to employment for men; a devastating loss in full-time jobs for male workers and produced substantial seemingly noncompetitive increases in earnings inequality.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
4384.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 1993 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4384
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Layard, Richard & Nickell, Stephen, 1986.
"Unemployment in Britain,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 53(210(S)), pages S121-69, Supplemen.
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Blanchflower, David G & Millward, Neil & Oswald, Andrew J, 1991.
"Unionism and Employment Behaviour,"
Economic Journal,
Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(407), pages 815-34, July.
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