In this paper we test a new empirical relationship between wage and inflation. We introduce the concept of a cumulative wage gap, meaning the cumulative gap between the current wage and a maximum peak wage value in the past. In a crisis, people relate to their peak gains in the immediate past....

While female labor force participation (LFP) in Iran is among the lowest in the world, there is hardly any study on the COVID-19 pandemic effects on the country's female LFP. We find that female LFP decreased during the pandemic years by around 1 percentage point in 2021 and 2022. When...

This paper evaluates the distributional consequences of social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty and labour income inequality in 20 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. We gather detailed information from national laws and decrees on the strictness and the duration of...

Following massive take-up rates during the COVID-19 period, short-time work (STW) policies have attracted renewed interest. In this paper, we take stock of this policy instrument and provide a critical review of STW systems in Europe. We focus on the objectives of STW programs and their primary...

The large economic costs of full-blown lockdowns in response to COVID-19 outbreaks, coupled with heterogeneous mortality rates across age groups, led to question non-discriminatory containment mea- sures. In this paper we provide an assessment of the targeted approach to containment. We propose...

This paper uses a matching method to provide an estimate of the nativity wealth gap among older households in Europe. This approach does not require imposing any functional form on wealth and avoids validity-out-of-the-support assumptions; furthermore, it allows not only the estimation of the...