In 2007 and 2008 Polish governments introduced a series of reforms which led to a substantial reduction in the tax "wedge" (in Polish: "klin") on labour. We show that when considered together the package of introduced reforms brought much greater reductions in the tax burden compared to a widely...

Der deutsche Arbeitsmarkt hat sich in den letzten Jahren stark verändert. Es sind viele zusätzliche Arbeitsplätze entstanden. Das bedeutet aber nicht, dass die Politik in der neuen Legislaturperiode nichts mehr zu tun hätte. Zwei wesentliche Handlungsfelder stehen auf der Agenda: die...

Die deutsche Bundesregierung plant die Einführung eines flächendeckenden Mindestlohns. Dieser Beitrag fasst die vorliegenden nationalen und internationalen Erfahrungen mit Mindestlöhnen zusammen. Er analysiert dabei die Konsequenzen für Beschäftigung und Einkommensverteilung und legt eine...

We analyze optimal taxation in an economy with monopsonistic labor 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...

This paper puts together evidence for the wages, employment and price effects of the minimum wage. This overall picture will help to understand the small employment effects prevalent in the literature in the light of price effects. The data used is an under-explored monthly Brazilian household...

We show that, contrary to widespread belief, low-pay workers do not generally prefer that the minimum wage rate be increased until the labor demand is unitary elastic. Rather, there exists a critical value of elasticity of labor demand so that increases in the minimum wage rate make low-pay...

Using the monthly samples of the Current Population Survey (CPS) outgoing rotation group files, this paper analyzes the most recent increase in the U.S. minimum wage rate. This study focuses on immigrant and native-born workers who are employed in industries with low and high immigrant...

Defensive innovations in developed countries can explain the empirical phenomenon that openness towards trade with less-developed countries does not necessarily induce a substantial increase in the wage differential and trade volumes. Building on step-by-step innovations as introduced by Aghion...

In this paper we define and estimate measures of labor market frictions using data on job durations. We compare different estimation methods and different types of data. We propose and apply an unconditional inference method that can be applied to aggregate duration data. It does not require...