Labour shortages have become prevalent across advanced economies. Yet, little is known about which firms are more likely to face them and the impact they have on the labour market. We create a firm-level data set spanning 28 EU countries, 283 regions and 18 sectors, contributing to close this...

This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the macroeconomic, distributional, and fiscal effects of three reform proposals for Germany: i) a reduction in the social security tax in the low-wage sector, ii) a publicly financed expansion of full-day child care and full-day schooling, and...

As China implements reforms under the “new normal,” maintaining stability in the labor market is a priority. The country's demography and labor dynamics are changing, after benefitting in past decades from ample cheap labor. So far, the labor market appears to be resilient, even as growth...

Labor markets in the Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia) are characterized by some of the highest unemployment and low employment rates in Europe. We analyze the poor labor market outcomes in these countries by comparison with the...

Using data from the Vietnam Labor Force Survey, this paper takes a granular look at the mostsalient drivers of labor informality in Vietnam by examining: (i) the nature of labor informalityand transitions from formal to informal employment status and the role of worker characteristics;(ii) the...

We discuss regional disparities in economic performance and living standards. We first set out some key facts, and provide a conceptual framework to help analyze whether such disparities are efficient, or instead reflect market and/or policy failures. We examine whether policy attempts to reduce...

How often have wage-price spirals occurred, and what has happened in their aftermath? We investigate this by creating a database of past wage-price spirals among a wide set of advanced economies going back to the 1960s. We define a wage-price spiral as an episode where at least three out of four...

What are the implications of the needed climate transition for the potential reallocation of the U.S. labor force? This paper dissects green and polluting jobs in the United States across local labor markets, industries and at the household-level. We find that geography alone is not a major...

Using the near universe of online vacancy postings in the U.S., we study the interaction between labor market power and monetary policy. We show empirically that labor market power amplifies the labor demand effects of monetary policy, while not disproportionately affecting wage growth. A search...

This study examines the socio-economic impact of special economic zones (SEZs) in Cambodia---a prominent place-based policy established in 2005. The paper employs a database on existing and future SEZs in Cambodia with matched household surveys at the district level and documents stylized facts...