Do apparently large minimum wage increases in an environment of recession produce clearer evidence of disemployment effects than is typically observed in the new minimum wage literature? This paper augments the sparse literature on the most recent increases in the U.S. minimum wage, using three...

This paper uses the Italian Social Security employer-employee panel to study the effects of the Italian reform of 1990 on worker and job flows. We exploit the fact that this reform increased unjust dismissal costs for firms below 15 employees, while leaving dismissal costs unchanged for bigger...

This paper uses the Italian Social Security employer-employee panel to study the effects of the Italian reform of 1990 on worker and job flows. We exploit the fact that this reform increased unjust dismissal costs for firms below 15 employees, while leaving dismissal costs unchanged for bigger...

Tracking individual workers across jobs after Brazil's trade liberalization in the 1990s shows that tariff cuts trigger worker displacements, but neither exporters nor comparative-advantage sectors absorb trade-displaced labor. On the contrary, exporters separate from significantly more and hire...

A national minimum wage cannot explain variation in wages or employment across regions. Identification of the effect of the minimum wage separately from the effect of other variables on wages or employment requires regional variation. Many minimum wage variables with regional variation have been...

This paper investigates whether and in what sense the west German wage structure has been ?rigid? in the 1990s. To test the hypothesis that a rigid wage structure has been responsible for rising low-skilled unemployment, I propose a methodology which makes less restrictive identifying...