The recent Great Recession had very heterogeneous effects on the labor market outcomes in industrialized countries. We analyze the role of three labor market institutions in this context, namely the level of firing costs, the existence of short-time work and the wage formation process. This...

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically how employment subsidies should betargeted. We contrast measures involving targeting workers with low incomes/abilities andtargeting the unemployed under the criteria of "approximate welfare efficiency" (AWE)...

In a perfect labor market severance payments can have no real effects as they can beundone by a properly designed labor contract (Lazear 1990). We give empirical content tothis proposition by estimating the effects of EPL on entry wages and on the tenure-wageprofile in a quasi-experimental...