This research note discusses the Euro crisis in Greece in light of the referendum of July the 5th. It lays out the social and political costs of a GREXIT, but also of a continuing austerity policy. It proposes a reform policy fostering growth in Greece and discusses the role of conditionality....

Uncertainty affects employers' decisions on labour workforce, as it does on capital. We exploit differences on how firms adjust their labour work-force when uncertainty increases. Using data from the Wage Dynamic Network Survey for 25 European countries, we first construct, opposite to usual...

We study the impact of the Brexit referendum on Irish exporters to the UK. The referendum triggered a sharp devaluation of the British pound vis-a-vis the euro and led to considerable uncertainty about future trade relations between the UK and the EU. Using administrative data on the universe of...

Since 2008, Poland has been among the EU countries that have increased their minimum wage levels the most, following period in the mid-2000s during which the country's minimum wage was barely raised. We evaluate the impact of these minimum wage hikes on employment and wage growth in Poland...

This paper provides new evidence on the wage gap between informal and formal salary workers in South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. We use rich datasets that allow us to define informality in a relatively comparable fashion across countries. We compute precise wage differentials by accounting for...

Many studies have been conducted to analyze the effect of stricter Employment Protection Legislation (EPL). However, almost all of them has focused on an ex-post impact; leaving aside a second but equally important channel: expectations. This paper aims to analyze the role of expectations on...

Three fundamental forces have shaped labor markets over the last 50 years: the secular increase in the returns to education, educational upgrading, and the integration of large numbers of women into the workforce. We modify the Katz and Murphy (1992) framework to predict the structure of the...

Young and small firms are typically matched with younger and nonemployed individuals, and they provide these workers with lower earnings compared to other firms. To explore the mechanisms behind these facts, a dynamic model of entrepreneurship is introduced, where individuals can choose not to...

The pandemic has mainly affected the state of health and mortality, but has also had effects on the economy and the labor market. This article reports what happened to the total number of employees, their distribution by sectors and regions and changes in the number of employees for different...

The Canadian labour market experienced a period of unprecedented turmoil following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze the main changes using standard labour force statistics and new data on job postings. Envisaging a phase of temporary severing of employment relationships followed by...