Like most Western European countries, Germany stringently regulates dismissals and layoffs. Critics contend that this regulation raises the costs of employment adjustment and hence impedes employers' ability to respond to fluctuations in demand. Other German labor policies, however, most...

This paper compares employment and hours adjustment in Japanese and U.S. manufacturing. In contrast to some previous work, we find that adjustment of total labor input to demand changes is significantly greater in the United States than in Japan; adjustment of employment is significantly greater...

Good data on the size and composition of the independent contractor workforce are elusive, with household survey and administrative tax data often disagreeing on levels and trends. We carried out a series of focus groups to learn how self-employed independent contractors speak about their work....