While confounding factors typically jeopardise the possibility of using observational data to measure peer effects, field experiments offer the possibility of obtaining clean evidence. In this Paper we measure the output of four randomly selected groups of individuals who were asked to fill...

The prevalence of shirking within a large Italian bank appears to be characterized by significant regional differentials. In particular, absenteeism and misconduct episodes are substantially more prevalent in the south. We consider a number of potential explanations for this fact: different...

Gender Based Taxation (GBT) satisfies Ramsey’s optimal criterion by taxing less the more elastic labour supply of (married) women. This holds when different elasticities between men and women are taken as exogenous and primitive. But in this paper we also explore differences in gender...

Firms are the field of several strategic interactions that standard neo-classical analysis often ignores. Such strategic considerations concern relations between capital owner and labour, relations between marginal employees and incumbents and more generally all relations between different...

We analyze optimal taxation in an economy with monopsonistic labour markets. The individuals, whose only decisions are whether to work, or not, have heterogeneous productivities and opportunity costs of work. Given its preferences for redistribution, the government, which does not observe the...

Wages may be observed to increase with seniority because of firm-specific human capital accumulation or because of self-selection of better workers in longer jobs. In both these cases the upward sloping wage profile in cross-sectional regressions would reflect higher productivity of more senior...

In search of a macroeconomic theory of wage determination, the agnostic reader should be puzzled by the apparent contradiction between two influential theories. On one hand, in the standard search-matching theory with wage bargaining, hiring cost and constant returns of labour, the bargaining...

In October 2007 France introduced an exemption on the income tax and social security contributions that applied to wages received for hours worked overtime. The goal of the policy was to increase the number of hours worked. This article shows that this reform has had no significant impact on...