What are the factors that explain reversals in the implementation of structural reforms? Our main hypothesis is that reversals in different reforms are driven by different factors. This paper uses new reform indicators and presents novel evidence showing that (a) FDI inflows reduce the...

Increasing wage inequality between similar workers plays an important role for overall inequality trends in industrialized societies. To analyze this pattern, we incorporate directed labor market search into a dynamic model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and homogeneous workers....

Using a district-level panel constructed from five waves of decennial Indian censuses covering 1971-2011, we examine the medium-term (1991-2001) and long-term (1991-2011) impacts of the 1991 Indian trade liberalization on marriage and fertility rates among young women aged 15-34 years. We...

We exploit the pre-reform employment composition of Indian districts and differential tariff cuts across industries introduced by the 1991 trade liberalization to examine the impact of liberalization on human capital accumulation measured by completion of different stages of schooling and...

A common feature of public sector labor markets is the use of pay scales. This paper examines how the removal of pay scales impacts productivity, by exploiting a reform that compelled all schools in England to replace pay scales with school-designed performance related pay schemes. We find that...

This paper evaluates the impact on temporary agency workers' job satisfaction of a reform that considerably changed regulations covering the temporary help service sector in Germany. We isolate the causal effect of this reform by combining a difference-in-difference and matching approach and...

We construct objective measures of privatization, internal and external liberalization reform efforts, across countries over time, and investigate their determinants, reversals and macroeconomic impacts. We find that GDP growth determines external liberalization and privatization, concentration...