The principal justification for minimum wage legislation has been the claim that it would improve the economic condition of low-wage workers. Most previous analyses of the distributional effects of minimum wages have been based on simulation exercises employing restrictive assumptions that...

Displaced workers with generous periods of advance notice are more likely than their non-notified counterparts to avoid post-displacement unemployment altogether, but once unemployed, they tend to escape from unemployment much more slowly. The authors, using data from the five-year retrospective...

This paper assesses the recent progress and future direction of labor policy in the European Community, now the European Union. The authors show that most of the mandates foreshadowed under the December 1989 Community Social Charter have now been enacted into law. They analyze the possible...

This paper examines how advance notice of layoff affects the incidence and duration of unemployment following displacement. The authors use the Displaced Worker Survey for 1988, which, unlike earlier surveys in the series, contains information on written notice. The results are mixed. Longer...

Using matched employer-employee data from the German LIAB for 2001, the authors found that German works councils are in general associated with higher earnings, even after accounting for establishment- and worker heterogeneity. Works council wage premia exceed those of collective bargaining and...

Theory suggests that firms confront a hold-up problem in dealing with workplace unionism: unions will appropriate a portion of the quasi-rents stemming from long-lived capital. As a result, firms may be expected to limit their exposure to rent-seeking by reducing investments. The U.S. evidence...

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) of 1988 requires that covered firms provide affected employees with 60 days' advance notice of plant closings and large-scale layoffs. The authors use data from the three most recent Displaced Worker Surveys to compare the extent of...