The massive growth of jobs in the platform economy has reignited a long-standing debate on the wage elasticity of labour supply for the self-employed. Overwhelming empirical evidence seems to suggest that workers in the platform economy will work more hours than they wish to, for a lower wage,...

In this paper, we compare wages and labor market conditions of individuals engaged in online platform work and in traditional occupations by exploiting individual-level survey data on crowdworkers belonging to the largest micro-task marketplaces, focusing on evidence from the United States and...

This paper studies the fact that 37 percent of the internal migrants in China do not sign a labor contract with their employers, as revealed in a nationwide survey. These contract-free jobs pay lower hourly wages, require longer weekly work hours, and provide less insurance or on-the-job...

The current economic crisis requires fast information to predict economic behavior early, which is difficult at times of structural changes. This paper suggests an innovative new method of using data on internet activity for that purpose. It demonstrates strong correlations between keyword...

We provide the first estimates of the extent of common ownership of competing firms in Australia. Combining data on market shares and substantial shareholdings, we calculate the impact of common ownership on effective market concentration. Among firms where we can identify at least one owner, 31...

Understanding the economic and social effects of the recent global trends of rising market concentration and market power has become a policy priority. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper introduces a simple simulation method, the Welfare and Competition tool (WELCOM), to estimate with...

This note investigates the effects of the education level, product market rigidities and employment protection legislation on growth. It exploits macro-panel data for OECD countries. For countries close to the technological frontier, education and rigidities are significantly related to TFP...