Standard models suggest that adverse labor demand shocks will lead to bigger employment losses if institutional factors like minimum wages and trade unions prevent downward wage adjustments. Some economists have argued that this insight explains the contrast between the United States, where real...

Many economists suspect that downward nominal wage rigidities in ongoing labor contracts are an important source of employment fluctuations over the business cycle but there is little direct empirical evidence on this conjecture. This paper compares three occupations in the housing sector with...

European countries exhibit significant differences in employment rates of adult males. Differences in labor-leisure preferences, partly determined by cultural values that vary across countries, can be responsible for part of these differences. However, differences in labor market institutions,...

We examine whether startups attract employees with different pecuniary and non-pecuniary motives than small or large established firms. We then explore whether such differences in employee motives lead to differences in innovative performance across firm types. Using data on over 10,000 U.S. R&D...

The goal of this paper is to examine the implied penalty policies underlying the remedies created by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in terms of the policies' impact on employer and union behaviors. We present a simple model of deterrence as a means of evaluating workplace penalty...

We investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment laws, collective bargaining laws, and social security laws in 85 countries. We find that richer countries regulate labor less than poorer countries do, although they have more generous social security systems. The political power...