Alan Manning is Professor of Economics at LSE and Director of the Labour Markets Programme in CEP. He is a leading labour economist and an expert on low wage and female labour markets, unemployment, minimum wages, and monopsony in labour markets, on which he has recently published a book: Monopsony in Motion: imperfect competition in labour markets (Princeton University Press 2003). He will be leading the studies on job polarisation in the Skills and Labour Market Programme.