Dr. Frank Wilkinson

founder member of Institute for Employment Rights,; Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge; Emeritus Reader, University of Cambridge; and Visiting Professor, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Qualifications: Diploma in Economics, University of Oxford; BA, MA and Ph.D. University of Cambridge.

Career: Left school at 15 in 1949. Worked as farm worker, army cook (national service) and ironworker. Ruskin College, Oxford, 1961-63. Kings College, Cambridge, 1963-1969. Researcher, in University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Economics 1969 to retirement.. Currently teaching on trade union degree course at Birkbeck College. Chairman of the Cambridge Political Economy Society, Editor of Cambridge Journal of Economics; Founder member and executive committee member of the Institute for Employment Rights.

Research: Concerned mainly with the effects of institutions and organisations on economic performance.
There are four broad fields:
¹ the effects of institutions and organisations on work organisation, wage systems, employment relationships and labour market structures;
² the interaction between trends in real wages, collective bargaining, incomes policy and inflationary processes;
³ the economic and socio-legal analysis of labour regulation and social security systems and their effect on income distribution, economic and social deprivation, social exclusion, job security and; work intensity and
⁴ the effects of differences between productive systems in organisations and institutions and their influence on inter- and intra-firm relationships and industrial performance.