This study examines the differences in the likelihood of overpayment and overemployment in establishments with and without works councils. In contrast to other studies, we use assessments by the management concerning the existence of such problems. Furthermore, we also analyze how different...

We study short- and long-term wage effects of two important elements of non-wage labour costs: firing costs and payroll taxes. We exploit a reform that introduced substantial reduction in these two provisions for unemployed workers aged less than thirty and over forty five years. Theoretical...

This paper analyzes, using country-level panel data from transition economies and Latin America, the impact of labor market institutions on informal economic activity. The measure of informal economic activity is taken from Schneider et al. (2010), the most comprehensive study to date. The data...

We exploit homogeneous firm level data of manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors to study the impact of firing restrictions on job flow dynamics across 14 European countries. We find that more stringent firing laws dampen the response of job destruction to the cycle, thus making job...

We use a calibrated general equilibrium model with heterogeneous labor and search to evaluate the quantitative effects of various labor tax cut scenarios. The focus is on skill heterogeneity combined with downward wage rigidities at the low end of the skill ladder. Workers can take jobs for...

The paper studies the relationship between teenagers' first labor market experience and subsequent labor market performance using data on all Swedish youths graduating from vocational high schools in the recession years of 1991-94. Sibling fixed-effects combined with detailed data on high school...

This paper surveys the economics literature on overeducation. The original motivation to study this topic were reports that the strong increase in the number of college graduates in the early 1970s in the US led to a decrease in the returns to college education. We argue that Duncan and...

This study examines the extent and influence of occupational licensing in the U.S. using a specially designed national labor force survey. Specifically, we provide new ways of measuring occupational licensing and consider what types of regulatory requirements and what level of government...

We present estimates of the effect of legal immigration status on earnings of undocumented workers. Our contribution to the literature centers on a two-step procedure that allows us to first estimate the legal status of an immigrant and then estimate the effect of the Immigration Reform and...

In-work benefits are becoming an increasingly relevant labour market policy, gradually expanding in scope and geographical coverage. This paper investigates the equilibrium impact of in-work benefits and contrasts it with the traditional partial equilibrium analysis. We find under which...