Recent estimates in standard models of wage determination for both unionization and occupational licensing have shown wage effects that are similar across the two institutions. These cross-sectional estimates use specialized data sets, with small sample sizes, for the period 2006 through 2008....

This chapter reviews the literature on employment and labor law. The goal of the review is to understand why every jurisdiction in the world has extensive employment law, particularly employment protection law, while most economic analysis of the law suggests that less employment protection...

British Master and Servant law made employee contract breach a criminal offense until 1875. We develop a contracting model generating equilibrium contract breach and prosecutions, then exploit exogenous changes in output prices to examine the effects of labor demand shocks on prosecutions....

In this paper we develop a theory of union bargaining power based on firm-specific skills acquired by the insider work-force. We show that unions increase the bargaining power of insiders only in states of the world in which the firm would like to retain insiders but not hire outsiders. Union...

The paper surveys unemployment policies for advanced market economies and evaluates them by examining the predictions of the underlying macroeconomic theories. The basic idea is that, for the most part, different unemployment policy prescriptions rest on different macroeconomic theories, and our...

This paper provides an empirical investigation into the relationship between ex ante U.S. labor contract durations and uncertainty over the period 1970 to 1995. We construct measures of inflation uncertainty as well as aggregate nominal and real uncertainty. The results not only corroborate...

This paper uses the British Household Panel Survey to investigate when seniority is rewarded by automatic incremental scales. Scales are seen as an alternative to individual merit pay. They are likely to be used when individual productivity is hard to measure, when firms provide all workers with...

Recent research in macroeconomics emphasizes the role of wage rigidity in accounting for the volatility of unemployment fluctuations. We use worker-level data from the CPS to measure the sensitivity of wages of newly hired workers to changes in aggregate labor market conditions. The wage of new...

We study the relationship between employee satisfaction and abnormal stock returns around the world, using lists of the "Best Companies to Work For" in 14 countries. We show that employee satisfaction is associated with positive abnormal returns in countries with high labor market flexibility,...

China's new Labor Contract Law took effect on January 2008 and required firms to give migrant workers written contracts, strengthened labor protections for workers and contained penalties for firms that did not follow the labor code. This paper uses survey data of migrant workers in the Pearl...