This paper studies the impact of an increase in the enforcement of labor regulations onunemployment and inequality, using city level data from Brazil. We find that stricterenforcement (affecting the payment of mandated benefits to formal workers) leads to: higherunemployment, less income...

This paper estimates a structural model of the employment decision of the firm. Ourestablishment level data displays an extreme degree of rigidity in that employment levels arelargely constant throughout our sample...

Using a matched firm-worker dataset, we show both theoretically and empirically that positiveassortative matching between firms...

We compare the returns to education (RTE) for entrepreneurs and employees, based on 19waves of the NLSY database. By using instrumental variable techniques (IV) and takingaccount of selectivity, we find that the RTE are significantly higher for entrepreneurs than foremployees (18.3 percent and...

Recent empirical evidence has found that employment services and small-businessassistance programmes are often successful at getting the unemployed back to work. Oneimportant concern of policy makers is to decide which of these two programmes is moreeffective and for whom...

Census data show that since 1980 low-skill workers in the United States have beenincreasingly employed in the provision of non-tradeable time-intensive services - such asfood preparation and cleaning - that can be broadly thought as substitutes of homeproduction activities. Meanwhile the wage...

The labor market is often asserted to be characterized by rigidities that make it difficult forolder workers to carry out their desired trajectory from work to retirement. An importantsource of rigidity is restrictions on hours of work imposed by firms that use team productionor face high fixed...

According to the Hutchens (1999) model, early retirement is not explained as a result ofmaximizing expected individual utility but rather as a demand-side phenomenon arising froma firm’s profit-maximizing behaviour...

To assess the employment effects of labor costs it is crucial to have reliable estimates of thelabor cost elasticity of labor demand. Using a matched firm-worker dataset, we estimate along run unconditional labor demand function, exploiting information on workers to correct forendogeneity in the...

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically how employment subsidies should betargeted. We contrast measures involving targeting workers with low incomes/abilities andtargeting the unemployed under the criteria of "approximate welfare efficiency" (AWE)...