We explore the far-reaching implications of low-wage subsidies on aggregate employment. Low-wage subsidies have three important effects. First, they promote employment of unskilled workers (who tend to be the ones who earn low wages). Second, by raising the payoff of unskilled work relative to...

The paper analyzes the influence of minimum wages on firms' incentive to train their employees. We show that this influence rests on two countervailing effects: minimum wages (i) augment wage compression and thereby raise firms' incentives to train and (ii) reduce the profitability of employees,...

Dieses Papier erläutert die praktische Umsetzung des Konzeptes der Einstellungsgutscheine (Kieler Arbeitspapier 1302 "Comparing the Effectiveness of Employment Subsidies" von Alessio Brown, Christian Merkl und Dennis Snower). Nach unserem Konzept werden den Arbeitgebern bei der Einstellung von...

The paper investigates the relationship between offshoring, wages, and the ease with which individuals' tasks can be offshored. Our analysis relates to recent theoretical contributions arguing that there is only a loose relationship between the suitability of a task for offshoring and the...