Wages and concentration in British manufacturing

Abstract

Reports on an attempt to test the applicability of Kwoka's propositions to skilled and semi-skilled manual workers in British manufacturing in 1980, using data at the level of the establishment. There are a number of important differences between the USA and the UK which made direct comparisons between the two sets of results very difficult, eg where, by virtue of its smaller market, an equivalent British industry tends to be more highly concentrated than its American counterpart, and thus the average level of concentration tends to be greater in Great Britain than in the US. Offsetting this, however, is the sensitivity of British manufacturing to overseas competition, and the rapid decline it has experienced over the last decade. Indeed, since 1975 its has lost around 2 million workers or around 25% of its total workforce.