Using linked employer-employee data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey 1999-2004, we provide new evidence on how the cost of absence affects labor supply decisions. We use a particular feature of the data by which total absences are divided into three separate categories: sick paid...

We evaluate a randomized experiment of a statistical support system developed to assist caseworkers in Swiss employment offices in choosing appropriate active labour market programmes for their unemployed clients. This statistical support system predicted the labour market outcome for each...

This paper investigates how a mandatory activation program in Denmark affects the job finding rate of unemployed workers. The activation program was introduced in an experimental setting where about half of the workers who became unemployed in the period from November 2005 to March 2006 were...

On 1 January 1999, four major reforms took effect in Poland in the areas of health, education, pensions and local administration. After 20 years, only in the last case does the original structural design remain essentially unchanged. We examine the implications of this reform from the...

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth...

About one in four workers challenges her dismissal in front of a labor court in France. Using a data 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 a simple theoretical...

Employment contracts give a principal the authority to decide flexibly which task his agent should execute. However, there is a tradeoff, first pointed out by Simon (1951), between flexibility and employer moral hazard. An employment contract allows the principal to adjust the task quickly to...

This paper exploits an exogenous shift in the trade policy in India to study the impact of industrialization on son preference. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that households are more likely to have a male child in regions with higher trade openness relative to regions with...

The paper examines if workplace gender diversity offers some explanation for the decline of unions in Britain. Using the WERS2004 linked employer-employee data and alternative econometric estimators it reports an inverse relationship between workplace union density and gender diversity. Gender...

Based on two representative samples of employees, the German Socio Economic Panel and the European Social Survey, we explore the relation between certain measures of control in employment relationships (i.e. working time regulations, use of performance appraisal systems, monitoring by...