The paper provides a historical overview of the pre-modern allocation of work within the territory of the later Germany from the 18th until the middle of the 19th century. We explore how the social allocation of work during the feudal system took place and trace back the development of wage...

We examine the efficiency properties of labor taxation. A spatial model of an economy is introduced whose key feature is a new approach to restricted labor mobility. We characterize the efficient allocation of labor and properties of a decentralized equilibrium. An efficient allocation of labor...

In a Walrasian labor market, the labor income share is constant under the assumptions of a Cobb-Douglas production function and perfect competition. Given the observed decline of the labor share in recent decades, this paper relaxes these assumptions, proposes a time-series calculation of the...

This paper analyses the impact of government grants on labour demand using plant leveldata for manufacturing industry in Ireland. Our data consists of a large sample of plants andtheir complete grant history...

Many aspects of the economic transition which started in 1989 in Poland are by nowcomplete. However, the route Polish governments have so far taken concerning the systemof support for low-income families still implies very different poverty alleviation schemescompared to those found in many...

We estimate the wage penalty associated with working in the South African informal sector.To this end we use a rich data set on non-self employed males that allows one to accuratelydistinguish workers employed in the informal sector from those employed in the formal sectorand link individuals...

Economists have concerns about the firing cost implications of mandated severance plans. Analysis reveals that predicted severance plan consequences depend critically on the precise structure of the plan. Whether governments mandate (i) severance insurance plans or (ii) severance savings plans...

This paper investigates the effects of intensified screening of disability insurance benefit applications. A large-scale experiment was setup where in 2 of the 26 Dutch regions case workers of the disability insurance administration were instructed to screen applications more intense. The...

This paper argues that the level of financial services provision determines the risk management strategies among the poor. The paper estimates the determinants of the household's use of one, two or all three types of microfinancial services applying ordered probit models and additionally probit...