Worksharing is considered by many as a promising public policy to reduce unemployment. In this paper we present a review of the most pertinent theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on worksharing. In addition, we also provide new empirical evidence on this issue, by a cross...

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...

In 2012, in the midst of a recession, a labour law reform in Portugal allowed firms to reduce the overtime premium paid to their workers by 50% or more. Until then, overtime premiums were set by law at a relatively high level and could not be cut unilaterally. We analyse matched...

We expand the analysis of cyclical changes in labor demand by decomposing changes along the intensive margin into those in days/week and in hours/day. Using large cross sections of U.S. data, 1985-2018, we observe around ¼ of the adjustment in weekly hours occurring through changing days/week....

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.'s zero-hours contract (ZHC) - a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows employees to decline any workload. We find quantitatively that ZHCs improve welfare by enabling firms with more volatile...

This paper examines employment and hours impacts of the 1999 introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) and the 2016 introduction of the UK National Living Wage (NLW) in Northern Ireland (NI). NI is the only part of the UK with a land border where the NMW and NLW cover those working on...

Germany experienced an even deeper fall in GDP in the Great Recession than the United States, with little employment loss. Employers' reticence to hire in the preceding expansion, associated in part with a lack of confidence it would last, contributed to an employment shortfall equivalent to 40...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated government mandated shutdowns caused a historic shock to the U.S. economy and a disproportionate job loss concentrated among the working class. While an unprecedented social safety net policy response successfully offset earnings loses among lower-wage...

This paper exploits several reforms of wage subsidies in the framework of the German Minijob program to investigate substitution and complementarity relationships between subsidized and non-subsidized labor demand. We apply an instrumental variables approach and use administrative data on German...

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...