We use longitudinal individual wage and employment data in France and the United States to investigate the effect of changes in the real minimum wage on an individual's employment status. We find that movements in both French and American real minimum wages are associated with mild employment...

Customs data reveal heterogeneity and granularity of relationships among buyers and sellers. A key insight is how more exports to a destination break down into more firms selling there and more buyers per exporter. We develop a quantitative general equilibrium model of firm-to-firm matching that...

We examine the sales of French manufacturing firms in 113 destinations, including France itself. Several regularities stand out: (1) the number of French firms selling to a market, relative to French market share, increases systematically with market size; (2) sales distributions are very similar...

We examine entry across 113 national markets in 16 different industries using a comprehensive data set of French manufacturing firms. The data are unique in indicating how much each firm exports to each destination. Looking across all manufacturers: (1) Firms differ substantially in export...

Does entry regulation hinder job creation? We investigate this question in the context of the French retail industry, a sector that has experienced especially low rates of job creation over the last 25 years. Since the early 70s, the French government has required regional zoning board approval...

We use longitudinal individual wage and employment data for young people in France and the United States to investigate the effect of intertemporal changes in an individual's status vis-…-vis the real minimum wage on employment transition rates. We" find that movements in both French and...

In this article, we estimate the costs of hiring, separation, and retirement of employees for a representative sample of French establishments in 1992. The estimates are computed using data from three sources: the Wage Structure Survey (ESS), the Workforce Movement Questionnaire (DMMO), and the...

We decompose the real annual full time compensation costs of 1.1 million French workers followed over 12 years into a part that reflects their external opportunity wage and a part that reflects their internal wage rate. Using these components of compensation we investigate the extent to which...

Our empirical analyses distinguish between flows of workers, directly measured, and job creation and destruction, again, directly measured. We use a representative sample of all French establishments for 1987 to 1990. Our most important findings are that (1) annual job creation can be...

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...