Did the Thatcher Reforms Change British Labour Performance?

David Blanchflower and Richard Freeman

No 4384, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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.

Date: 1993-06
Note: LS
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Published as Is the British Labour Market Different, ed. R. Barrell, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

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