We exploit a natural experiment provided by the 1999 introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) to test for efficiency wage considerations in a low-wage sector, the UK residential care homes industry. Empirical results provide support to the wagesupervision trade-off prediction of the shirking model and suggest that the NMW may have operated as an efficiency wage. Our findings are in li...

* Increasing demand on public hospital beds has led to what many see as a hospital bed crisis requiring substantial increases in bed numbers. By 2050, if current bed use trends persist and as the numbers of frail older patients rise exponentially, a 62% increase in hospital beds will be required to meet expected demand, at a cost almost equal to the entire current Australian healthcare budget. ...