This paper exploits a unique cross-country, firm-level survey to study the responses of European firms to the sharp demand and credit contraction triggered by the global Great Recession of 2009. The analysis reveals that cost reduction-particularly labour cost reduction through the adjustment of...

Informality, measured as the share of the employed who do not have access to social security, is high in Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic. This paper uses new data from the 2010 Lebanon and Syria matched employer-employee surveys, which include modules that directly test for ability (Raven's...

This paper examines the role of non-wage cost rigidities in slowing down employment creation by assessing the effect of a policy aimed at fostering employment for women and young men introduced in Turkey in 2008. Exploiting a difference-in-difference-in differences strategy, I assess the...

We explore the role of workplace accommodations in reducing employment barriers and improving the employment of people with disabilities. We do so using data from the 2015 Survey of Disability and Employment on people with disabilities who applied for vocational rehabilitation services in three...

In recent years, many employees have gained more control over temporal and locational aspects of their work via a variety of flexible work arrangements, such as flexi-time and telehomework. This temporal and locational flexibility of work (TLF) is often seen as a means to facilitate the...

This paper provides evidence on the role of non-base wage components as a channel for firms to adjust labour costs in the event of adverse shocks. It uses data from a firm-level survey for 25 European countries that covers the period 2010-2013. We find that firms subject to nominal wage...

A major labour market challenge following the Great Recession is to avoid an increase in long-term unemployment and thus the structural unemployment rate. Active labour market policies may play an important role in this respect. We consider these issues with outset in Denmark which is a country...

Among the OECD countries, Spain faces one of the highest rates of self-employment and Denmark one of the lowest, being the difference specially relevant among women. These two countries present important differences in their labor market conditions in terms of labor market flexibility,...

While there is a fairly broad consensus regarding the potential adverse effects of generous unemployment benefit insurance on steady-state employment, the short-term effects of benefit reforms are not well-established. This paper contributes to fill this gap by estimating impulse responses to...

We provide updated evidence on the effects of living wage laws in U.S. cities, relative to the earlier research covering only the first six or seven years of existence of these laws. There are some challenges to updating the evidence, as the CPS data on which it relies changed geographic coding...