Worker movements played a crucial role in making workplaces safer. Workplace safety is costly for firms but increases labour supply. A laissez-faire approach leaving safety of workplaces unknown is suboptimal. Safety standards set by better-informed trade unions are output and welfare...

Sick workers in many countries receive sick pay during their illness-related absences from the workplace. In several countries, the social security system insures firms against their workers' sickness absences. However, this insurance may create moral hazard problems for firms, leading to the...

This paper shows that increases in the minimum wage rate can have ambiguous effects on the working hours and welfare of employed workers in competitive labor markets. The reason is that employers may not comply with the minimum wage legislation and instead pay a lower subminimum wage rate. If...

We study the descriptive and substantive representation of workers through worker representatives, focusing on the selection of German works council representatives and their impact on worker outcomes. Becoming a professional representative leads to substantial wage gains for the elected,...

This study explores the relationship between the adoption of industrial robots and workplace injuries. Using establishment-level data on injuries, we find that a one standard deviation increase in our commuting zone-level measure of robot exposure reduces work-related annual injury rates by...

Are workplace smoking bans (WSBs) more than a ban on smoking? We study whether WSBs influence smoking cessation and exert behavioural spillover effects on (i) a set of health behaviours, and (ii) on individuals not directly affected by the bans. Drawing upon quasi-experimental evidence from...

Historically, worker movements have played a crucial role in making workplaces safer. Firms traditionally oppose better health standards. According to our interpretation, workplace safety is costly for firms but increases the average health of workers and thereby the aggregate labour supply. A...

Employment protection legislation (EPL) is an important determinant of workers' perceived future labour market prospects as well as their subjective well-being. Recent studies indicate that it is not only a worker's own level of protection, but also the employment protection of other workers...

This paper develops a revealed-preference approach that uses budget constrain discontinuities to price workplace safety. We track hourly workers who face the decision of how many hours to work at varying levels of Covid-19 risk and leverage state-specific discontinuities in unemployment...

I document a new fact about mobility within the United States. County-to-county migration and commuting drop discretely at state borders. People are three times as likely to move to a county 15 miles away, but in the same state, than to an equally-distant county across state lines. Standard...