The paper provides evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped locus linking the level of pay to the rate of regional (or industry) unemployment. This "wage curve" is estimated using microeconomic data for Britain, the US, Canada, Korea, Austria, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, and...

This paper studies the efficient agreements about the dependence of workers' earnings on employment, when the employment level is controlled by firms. The firms ' superior information about profitability conditions is responsible for this form of contract governance. Under plausible assumptions,...

Many firms encourage employees to own company stock through share plans that subsidize the price at favorable rates, but even so many employees do not buy shares. Using a new survey of employees in a multinational with a share ownership plan, we find considerable variation in joining among...

How persistent are the effects of legal institutions adopted or inherited in the distant past? A substantial literature argues that legal origins have persistent effects that explain clear differences in investor protections and financial development around the world today (La Porta et al, 1998,...

We examine the differential response of establishments to the recent global financial crisis with particular emphasis on the role of foreign ownership. Using a worldwide establishment panel dataset, we investigate how multinational subsidiaries around the world responded to the crisis relative...

Which public policies and ownership structures enhance the governance of banks? This paper constructs a new database on the ownership of banks internationally and then assesses the ramifications of ownership, shareholder protection laws, and supervisory/regulatory policies on bank valuations....