In this paper we investigate the process of job search, using a unique, large-scale data set for Portugal that allows us to assess the effect of job search methods on escape rates from unemployment and, in a new departure, the impact of job-finding methods used by the unemployed on earnings. In...

Spain faces the highest unemployment rate among the European Union countries (22.2%), and Portugal the lowest (7.3%). However, superficially, these two countries share common labour market features: they both have the most stringent job security rules in the OECD, the architecture of their...

Drawing on evidence from the United States and Germany, this paper offers a survey of the effects of worker representation (in unions and works councils) and innovative work practices on firm performance. The interaction between worker representation and high performance work practices provides...

Taking as our point of departure a model proposed by David Card (2001), we suggest new methods for analyzing wage dispersion in a partially unionized labor market. Card's method disaggregates the la- bor population into skill categories, which procedure entails some loss of information....

This paper provides the first full examination of the effect of German works councils on wages using matched employer-employee data (specifically, the LIAB for 2001). We find that works councils are associated with higher earnings. The wage premium is around 11 percent (and is higher under...

The principal justification for minimum wage legislation resides in improving the economic condition of low-wage workers. Most previous analyses of the distributional effects of minimum wages have been confined to simulation exercises employing rather restrictive assumptions that guarantee the...

The paper constructs an asymmetric information model to investigate the efficiency and equity cases for government mandated benefits. A mandate can improve workers? insurance, and may also redistribute in favor of more "deserving" workers. The risk is that it may also reduce output. The more...

Reputation indexes of employment protection have proven popular constructs in studies of the covariation of labor market institutions and macroeconomic outcomes. Portugal occupies an unenviable rank order in such measures of the stringency of employment protection. We critique this reputation in...