As a consequence of the rapid growth of temporary agency employment in Germany, the debate on the poor working conditions of temps, specifically their remuneration, has intensified recently. Using administrative data, the paper shows that the wage gap for German temp workers is rather large and...

There is increasing pressure for the flexibility of labour markets both in current EU member states and candidate countries. The paper aims to estimate the strictness of employment protection regulation, one of the most relevant aspects of labour market flexibility, and the degree of its actual...

We present a growth model in which R&D increases productivity, union-firm bargaining determines the distribution of rents and the government can support unions by labour market regulation. We show that if unions are initially very strong, regulation increases only the workers? profit share and...

In this paper, we present evidence on how employers perceive labor regulations and react when these are perceived to constrain the operation of their firm. The paper draws from harmonized surveys of (up to) 17,000 firms around the world, and compares employers? responses with actual labor...

Many European labor markets are characterized by heavy employment protection taxes and the widespread use of fixed-duration contracts. The simultaneous use of these two policy instruments seems somewhat contradictory since the former primarily aims at limiting job destruction whereas the latter...

Using a pooled data set consisting of 20 annual observations on each of eleven major industry groups, I estimate the effects of overtime pay regulation on weekly work schedules. After controlling for workweek trends within industries, the sharp expansions in overtime pay coverage resulting from...

Empirical investigation of the labor market consequences of employment protection has mushroomed since Lazear's (1990) pioneering study. Having sketched the theoretical background, we chart the course of the modern empirical literature. We focus mainly on dismissals protection, distinguishing...

The existing literature ignores the fact that in most European countries the strictness of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) varies across the firm size distribution. In Italy firms are obliged to rehire an unfairly dismissed worker only if they employ more than 15 employees....

This paper examines how employment protection legislation affects location decisions of multinationals. Based on a simple theoretical framework, we estimate an empirical model, using OECD-data on bilateral FDI-flows and employment protection indices. We find that, while an ?unfavourable?...

We present a theory of the emergence of laws restricting child labor or imposing mandatory education that is consistent with the fact that poor parents tend to oppose such laws. We find that if altruistic parents are unable to commit to educating their children, child-labor laws can increase the...