Labor market subcontracting is a global phenomenon. This paper presents a theory of wage fairness in a subcontracted labor market, where workers confront multi-party employment relationships and deep wage inequities between regular and subcontractor-mediated hires. We show that subcontracting...

Are political activists preferentially targeted by politicians engaging in clientelistic transfers to bolster political support? We provide the first model to highlight two possible rationales for such transfers: to mobilize support from the activists themselves, or to mobilize support from...

The issue of employer power is underemphasized in the development literature. The default model is usually one of competitive labor markets. This assumption matters for analysis and policy prescription. There is growing evidence that the competitive labor markets assump- tion is not valid for...

Does higher import competition increase formalization and aggregate productivity? Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation from Chinese imports, we provide empirical causal evidence that higher imports increases the share of formal manufacturing enterprise employment in India. This formal share...