Labor markets in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe underwent adramatic transformation. Notably, this transformation took place within just a few years. Untilthe mid-2000s job opportunities were scarce and unemployment was high. But since thenlabor demand has picked up and...

Despite the increased frequency of job loss for older workers in Europe, little is known on itseffect on the work-retirement decision. Employing individual data from the EuropeanCommunity Household Panel for Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K., a multivariatecompeting-risks hazard model is...

Informality has long been a salient phenomenon in developing country labor markets, thushas been addressed in several theoretical and empirical research. Turkey, given its economicand demographic dynamics, provides rich evidence for a growing, heterogeneous andmultifaceted informal labor market....

We measure labor market frictions using a strategy that bridges design-based and structuralapproaches: estimating an equilibrium search model using reduced-form minimum wageelasticities identified from border discontinuities and fitted with Bayesian and LIML methods.We begin by providing the...

About one in four workers challenges her dismissal in front of a labor court in France. Using adata set of individual labor disputes brought to French courts over the years 1996 to 2003,we examine the impact of labor court activity on labor market flows. First, we present asimple theoretical...

This paper analyzes the effect of firing costs on aggregate productivity growth. For thispurpose, a model of endogenous growth through selection and imitation is developed. It isconsistent with recent evidence on firm dynamics and on the importance of reallocation forproductivity growth...

In the years 2003-2008 the Russian economy experienced a period of strong and sustainedgrowth, which was accompanied by large worker turnover and rising informality. Weinvestigate whether the burden of informality falls disproportionately on job separators(displaced workers and quitters) in the...

We use individual data for Great Britain over the period 1992-2009 to compare the probabilitythat employed and unemployed job seekers find a job and the quality of the job they find. Thejob finding rate of unemployed job seekers is 50 percent higher than that of employed jobseekers, and this...

The introduction of firm size into labor search models raises the question how wages are setwhen average and marginal product differ. We develop and analyze an alternative to theexisting bargaining framework: Firms compete for labor by publicly posting long- termcontracts. In such a competitive...

Payroll taxes represent a major distortionary influence of governments on labor markets. Thispaper examines the role of payroll taxation and the social safety net for cyclical fluctuations ina nonmonetary economy with labor market frictions and unemployment insurance, when thelatter is only...