The paper examines severance pay programs around the world by providing the first ever overview of existing programs, examining their historic development, assessing their economic rationale and describing current reform attempts. While a significant part of the paper is devoted to a...

This paper focuses on minimum wages (MW), mandated benefits (MB), employment protection legislation (EPL), and unemployment insurance benefit systems (UIB). Even though different institutions might try to accomplish the same goal(s), the mechanisms through which each regulation interacts with...

This paper asks whether the increased openness and technological innovation in East Asia have contributed to an increased demand for skills in the region. The author explores a unique firm level data set across eight countries. Results strongly support the idea that greater openness and...

To what extent have macro and structural reforms in many developing countries affected the labor market? Are current policy settings in the labor market adequate to cope with the current challenges of a more dynamic but also more risky economic environment? Are there examples of successful labor...

The authors study the effect of enforcement of labor regulation in Brazil, an economy with a large informal sector and strict labor law. Enforcement affects mainly the degree of compliance with mandated benefits (severance pay, health, and safety) in the formal sector and the registration of...

The paper describes and evaluates unemployment insurance savings accounts (UISAs) a relatively new and not well-known way of providing unemployment benefits. The UISAs reduce work disincentives by allowing recipients to keep their own unused unemployment contributions, and offer the possibility...

This note summarizes activation policy strategies in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Policy makers can choose from a broad menu of options. Each of them comes with potential strengths and weaknesses, but there can also be important links between them. To...

Consistent with its focus on social policies, Sri Lanka has devoted significant attention to worker protection. One of the main pillars of its worker protection policy is the Termination of Employment of Workman Act (TEWA) introduced in 1971. The act aims to limit unemployment by raising the...

This paper investigates how enforcement of labor regulation affects firm size and other firm characteristics in Brazil. The authors explore firm level data on employment, capital, and output, city level data for economic city characteristics and new administrative data measuring enforcement of...

This paper analyzes the link between firm size and the investment in job training by employers. Using a large firm level data set across 99 developing countries, we show that a strong and positive correlation in the investment in job training and firm size is a robust statistical finding both...