Implementation of workplace policies--whether through enforcement of laws or administration of programs--raises the question of the interaction between institutions created to carry out laws and the activities of workplace based agents that directly (e.g. unions) or indirectly (e.g. insurance...

This paper reviews the theoretical arguments for and against linking international labor standards to trade. Based on theory alone it is difficult to generalize about the effect of labor standards on efficiency and equity. Some economists have argued that international labor standards are merely...

Legal rules governing the employer-employee relationship are many and varied. Economic analysis has illuminated both the efficiency and the effects on employee welfare of such rules, as described in this paper. Topics addressed include workplace safety mandates, compensation systems for...

We evaluate secure survey methods designed for the ongoing monitoring of harassment in organizations. We use the resulting data to answer policy relevant questions about the nature of harassment: How prevalent is it? What share of managers is responsible for the misbehavior? How isolated are its...

Wage inequality does not fully capture differences in job quality. Jobs also differ along other key dimensions, including the prevalence of labor rights violations. We construct novel measures of labor violation rates using data from federal agencies. Within local industries over time, a 10%...

China's new Labor Contract Law took effect on January 2008 and required firms to give migrant workers written contracts, strengthened labor protections for workers and contained penalties for firms that did not follow the labor code. This paper uses survey data of migrant workers in the Pearl...

Using plant-level data from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) for the fiscal years from 1998-99 through 2007-08, this study provides plant-level cross-state/time-series evidence of the impact of employment protection legislation (EPL) on total factor productivity (TFP) and labor productivity...

A weakening of labor protection policies is often invoked as one cause of observed monopsony power and the decline in labor's share of income, but little evidence exists on the causal impact of labor policies on wage markdowns. Using confidential Mexican economic census data from 1994 to 2019,...