This study investigates the existence of hiring criteria associated with the degree of social connections between skill and low-skill workers. We provide evidence about to what extent managers rely on their social connections in recruiting low-skill workers rather than on random matching. As one...

Although the negative economic effects of temporary employment are widely discussed, cross-country research on firms' demand for temporary employment is rare. National studies indicate that workload fluctuations are one major motive for firms to employ temporary workers. By studying a novel data...

This paper tests whether the job security offered by stricter employment protection legislation (EPL) undermines positive compensating wage differentials that would otherwise be paid. Specifically, we ask whether industries with relatively more need for layoffs and labour flexibility have lower...

Wage inequality does not fully capture differences in job quality. Jobs also differ along other key dimensions, including the prevalence of labor rights violations. We construct novel measures of labor violation rates using data from federal agencies. Within local industries over time, a 10%...

It is often argued that the labor market outcomes of several ?problem groups? of German workers suffer disproportionately in an economic downturn. These groups are women, the unskilled, and young and old workers, respectively. Using monthly individual-level data for West Germany for the period...

Starting in the 1980s, the composition of immigrants to the U.S. shifted towards less-skilled workers partly due to the influx of Latin American immigrants in the past few decades. Around this time, real wages and employment of younger and less-educated U.S. workers fell. Some believe that...

We examine the impact of state level legislation against the hiring of unauthorized immigrants on employment opportunities among competing low-skilled workers. Our focus is on the role of E-Verify mandates and specifically, we test for effects of the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on...

We document how differences in labour demand by gender explain the contrasting evolutions of labour force participation between men and women during the Great Recession in Europe. We first highlight that Europe is characterized by high levels of occupational segregation by gender. As a result,...

Census data show that since 1980 low-skill workers in the United States have been increasingly employed in the provision of non-tradeable time-intensive services - such as food preparation and cleaning - that can be broadly thought as substitutes of home production activities. Meanwhile the wage...

Massification of tertiary education, growing share of student workers on labour market and consequently increased competition for low-skilled jobs gave rise to the theory of crowding out of the less educated workers. This paper contributes to better understanding of temporary...