Recent empirical work on the effects of minimum wages has called into question the conventional wisdom that minimum wages invariably reduce employment. We develop a model of \emph{monopsonistic competition} with \emph{free entry} to analyze the effects of minimum wages, and our predictions fit...

A number of theories (search and efficiency wages) have been developed, in part, to explain why identically able workers are often paid different wages. However, when there is a minimum wage, they do not explain the resulting ``spike" in the wage distribution. Our model's predictions are...

The social science literature has done much to document pervasive racial discrimination in Brazil and there is little doubt that a very dark color is a handicap to social advancement. Nevertheless, very few empirical economic studies have attempted to quantify the impact of ethnic discrimination...

This paper applies an equilibrium search to study the transition from schooling to work of U.S. high school graduates. We consider the case where there is heterogeneity in firm productivity and the number of firm types is discrete. For this case the estimation problem is non-standard and the...

Based on data from a recent representative survey of the adult population in Germany this paper documents that the patterns of variables influencing nascent and infant entrepreneurship are quite similar and broadly in line with our theoretical priors – both types of entrepreneurship are...

This paper considers a two-period optimal contracting model in which firms make new hires in the second period subject to the constraint that they cannot pay discriminate either against or in favour of the new hires. Under an assumption on the information available to workers, it is shown that...

Using the AHEAD study, this article examines the wealth distribution among American househods with a member at least 70 years old. Household wealth is quite unevenly distributed among older American households. Those households in the top 10th percentile of the wealth distribution have 2,500...

As crianças fazem parte da vida económica das sociedades. A evidência histórica mostra que o contributo das crianças para o rendimento das famílias é consistentemente significativo. O trabalho infantil é, ainda nos dias de hoje, um fenómeno expressivo, quer nas sociedades menos...

Mobility restrictions (e.g., severance payment, life-long tenure, and divorce ban) are widely observed. This paper is an attempt to understand why there are these restrictions. I present a model economy that features production teams and focuses on the search for partners and the formation and...