We demonstrate why meaningful work, i.e. job-related activities that individuals view as purposeful and worthwhile, matters to labour economists. Building on self-determination theory, which specifies the roles of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as preconditions for motivation, we are the...

We are the first to examine the impact of robotization on work meaningfulness and autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are key for motivation and human flourishing at work. Using worker-level data from 13 industries in 20 European countries and OLS and instrumental variables estimations,...

Self-determination theory posits that individuals are motivated at work when their inherent psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness are satisfied. Drawing on this theory, this paper presents a new conceptual model explaining how work meaningfulness influences effort at...

Using survey data from 20 European countries, we construct novel worker-level indices of routine, abstract, social, and physical tasks, which we combine with industry-level robotization exposure. Our conceptual framework builds on the insight that robotization simultaneously replaces, creates,...

This paper proposes a framework to identify the effects of the mini- mum wage on the joint distribution of sector and wage in a developing country. I show how the discontinuity of the wage distribution around the minimum wage identifies the extent of non-compliance with the minimum wage policy,...

It is evident that both male and female workers in medium/larger establishments receive not only higher wages but also have a higher probability of participating in benefit programs than those in smaller establishments. This reinforces the well-documented ‘size’ effect. Further, the firm...

This chapter focuses on the lessons learned from four decades of studying the relationship between unions and job satisfaction. We discuss the original paradox that started the literature and trace the on-going debate over results that differ by sample and by estimation technique. We emphasize...

Standard labor market models predict that the likelihood of employment increases, hours worked increase, and individuals transition from less-skilled and temporary jobs to more skilled and more stable employment as they age. I examine the association between age and transactional sex work using...

In this paper we investigate the impact of non-cognitive skills on the quality of task-specific outcomes by conducting a quasi-experiment on a well-known online crowdsourcing platform. We show that a worker’s performance varies with personality traits, gender, human capital, crowdsourcing...

The emergence of the platform economy has served as a defining feature of increasing fragmented labour markets in modern economies. Recent research on platform work, however, has struggled to quantify the socio-economic conditions of platform workers relative to other occupation groups....