We investigate how demand conditions affect employers' provision of safety - something about which theory is ambivalent. Positive demand shocks relax financial constraints that limit safety investment, but simultaneously raise the opportunity cost of increasing safety rather than production. We...

The government contracts with a foreign firm to extract a natural resource that requires an upfront investment and which faces price uncertainty. In states where profits are high, there is a likelihood of expropriation, which generates a social cost that increases with the expropriated value. In...

We provide new evidence of one channel through which circular labor migration has long run effects on origin communities: by raising completed human capital of the next generation. We estimate the net effects of migration from Malawi to South African mines using newly digitized Census and...

We study the timing-of-extraction problem facing a decentralized mine owner when extraction entails environmental damage. As expected, when the environmental damage from mining is known, the socially optimal timing will depend on the magnitude of the damage relative to these costs in the rest of...

Measures of entrepreneurship, such as average establishment size and the prevalence of start-ups, correlate strongly with employment growth across and within metropolitan areas, but the endogeneity of these measures bedevils interpretation. Chinitz (1961) hypothesized that coal mines near...

We analyze how information disclosure policy affects investment efficiency in non-cooperative settings with information externalities. In a two-firm, two-period model, we characterize equilibrium behavior under policies which disclose whether investment returns exceed a predefined level. These...

This paper considers the likely impact that European Union (EU) will have on the labor compact. It is argued that, despite increased economic integration in Europe, countries will still be able to maintain distinct labor practices if they are willing to bear the cost of those practices. The...

This study analyzes the impact of major industrial relations variables on productivity within a plant that assembles large commercial aircraft. The analysis combines the deep firm- specific knowledge of management and labor typical of the best of traditional industrial relations with formal...