The Bologna process inspired the Italian 3+2 reform of the university system whichconstitutes a big increase in the supply of college graduates. This paper is a preliminaryattempt to identify the effects of the reform on (i) the relative probability (relative to nongraduates)of employment of...

The European Social Survey data are used to analyze informal employment at the main jobin 30 countries. Overall, informality decreases from South to West to East to North. However,dependent work without contract is more prevalent in Eastern Europe than in the West,except for Ireland, the UK and...

This paper aims at identifying the labour share (wage-productivity gap) as a major factor inthe evolution of inequality and employment. To this end, we use annual data for the US, UKand Sweden over the past forty years and estimate country-specific systems of labourdemand and Gini coefficient...

In this paper we study the joint decision process of changing the structure of jobs and layingoff individual workers in a firm that downsizes its workforce. A hierarchical decision model isproposed and estimated using personnel data from a firm in demise comparing thecharacteristics of the...

The optimal design of low income support is examined using a structural labour supplymodel. The approach incorporates unobserved heterogeneity, fixed costs of work, childcarecosts and the detailed non-convexities of the tax and transfer system. The analysis considerspurely Pareto improving...

We examine the interactions between public and private sector wages per employee inOECD countries. The growth of public sector wages and of public sector employmentpositively affects the growth of private sector wages. Moreover, total factor productivity, theunemployment rate and the degree of...

Portuguese firms engage in intense reallocation, most employers simultaneously hire andseparate from workers, resulting in a large heterogeneity of flows and excess turnover. Largeand older firms have lower flows, but high excess turnover rates. In small firms, hires andseparations move...

We examine the origins and outcome of entrepreneurship on the basis of exceptionallycomprehensive Norwegian matched worker-firm-owner data. In contrast to most existingstudies, our notion of entrepreneurship not only comprises self-employment, but alsoemployment in partly self-owned limited...

Real exchange rate movements are important drivers of the reallocation of resourcesbetween sectors of the economy. Economic theory suggests that the impact of exchangerates should vary with the degree of exposure to international competition and with thetechnology level. This paper contributes...

We study differences in the adjustment of aggregate real wages in the manufacturing sectorover the business cycle across OECD countries, combining results from different data anddynamic methods. Summary measures of cyclicality show genuine cross-countryheterogeneity even after controlling for...