Invitation to the Inaugural Lecture of Prof Pedro Martins - Understanding how to create more and better jobs - Wednesday 21st October 18:30

The School of Business and Management, Queen Mary would like to invite you to attend the upcoming inaugural lecture for Prof Pedro Martins, one of our Professors of Applied Economics. 

This event is free to attend and you can find further details and reserve a place here

Understanding How to Create More and Better Jobs 

Professor Pedro Martins
Wednesday 21st October 2015
18:30 - 20:30
Skeel Lecture Theatre, the People's Palace 

Lecture Synopsis: 

The labour market plays a critical role in the economy, in society and in our individual lives. Understanding how the labour market operates and how its functioning can be improved is very important for policy makers, firms and all citizens. Fortunately, the last 20 years have witnessed a marked improvement in theory, evaluation methods and data. In this lecture Professor Martins will present some of his contributions to the discipline. He will also call on a greater interaction between researchers in economics and other fields of study as well as other stakeholders to promote further improvements in labour market evidence, policy and outcomes. 

Meet our Professor - Professor Pedro Martins:  

Pedro Martins is Professor of Applied Economics at Queen Mary University of London, receiving his Professorship in 2009. Pedro’s main research area is labour economics, having published several articles in leading journals and collaborated with a number of international organizations, statistics agencies, multinational firms and NGOs. Between 2011 and 2013, Pedro served in the Government of Portugal, as Secretary of State for Employment. During that period, he conducted a number of reforms, in areas such as employment law, active labour market policies, and collective bargaining.

What will public management be like in Britain for the next five years? - Perri 6, Professor in Public Management, School of Business and Management at Queen Mary

Christopher Devereux - License: CC BY 2.0

If the voters will believe you, then a good way to get elected is to promise them that your government will spend less of their money and, at the same time, provide the people with more generous services. It is hardly a novel approach. But, provided the voters are not convinced by any alternatives they are offered, it can work. And in May 2015 at least in England although not in the rest of the United Kingdom, it did.

Having promised both things, how is the trick actually going to be done? And what will public management in Britain be like for those running our public services over the next five or even ten years?

When Labour Market Reforms actually Reduce Unemployment - Prof Pierre Cahuc, Prof Francis Kramarz and Prof Pedro Martins

Recently, “Les Echos” journalist Dominique Seux observed that, in contrast with the abundant commentary on Greek economic woes, there is little discussion about the case of Portugal. A recent conference of Pedro Martins, one of the authors of this article and former Secretary of State of Employment in Portugal, provides us with the perfect occasion to revisit the recent evolution of Portugal’s labour market. 

Between 2008 and 2011, the minimum wage there increased by 20%. This increase was also broadly reflected in salaries beyond the minimum wage, thanks to centralized negotiation mechanisms featuring unrepresentative trade unions, with a membership below 10% that mostly represent permanent workers’ interests. Thus, when the recession started, these developments on wages amplified its impact on employment. From April 2008 to January 2013, unemployment rose from 8.6% to 17.7%, affecting mostly young workers. Permanent workers enjoyed one of the most restrictive regulations of the OECD, with its redundancy payments (one month per year of compensation) amongst the highest. In this situation, Portuguese youth was confined to temporary contracts, destroyed in a very large scale once economic activity cooled off. Among those below 25 years, unemployment rate surged from 20 to 40%.