This paper studies firms' adjustment behavior to the growth in labor costs induced by Italian collective bargaining institutions. Our research design compares several firms' outcomes across collective agreements within the same sector and geographic location, exploiting discontinuities in...

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effect of labor market programs on labor force participation. Labor market programs could counteract business-cycle variation in the participation rate that is due to the discouraged-worker effect, and they could prevent labor force outflow. An equation...

In this paper we define and estimate measures of labor market frictions using data on job durations. We compare different estimation methods and different types of data. We propose and apply an unconditional inference method that can be applied to aggregate duration data. It does not require...

This paper argues that expectations are an important element that need to be included into the analysis of the effects of the minimum wage on employment. We show in a standard matching model that the observed employment effect is higher the lower is the likelihood associated with the minimum...

Using a Difference-in-Differences approach we evaluate the effects of a 10 percentage points reduction in the payroll tax introduced in 2002 for firms in the northern part of Sweden. We find no employment effects for existing firms and can rule out that a 1 percentage point payroll tax reduction...

In this paper we evaluate the effects of a regional experiment that reduced payroll-taxes by 3–6 percentage points for three years in Northern Finland. We match each firm in the target region with a similar firm in the control region and estimate the effect of the payroll-tax reduction by...

In view of the demographic trends, most EU countries face the problem of a declining work force in the future. Understanding the interaction between income support systems (such as unemployment benefits, social assistance, early retirement and pension systems) and total labor supply is of...

This paper reviews how income-support systems affect labour force participation in the UK. The UK's approach to social insurance is basic security, with modest, typically flat-rate, benefits; insurance-based benefits are relatively unimportant. Compared with the EU, the UK has high employment...

Widespread economic recessions and protracted financial crises have been documented as setting back gender equality and other development goals in the past. In the midst of the current global crisisoften referred to as the Great Recession"there is grave concern that progress made in poverty...

We contribute a theory in which three channels interact to determine the degree of monopsony power and therefore the markdown of a worker's spot wage relative to her marginal product: (1) heterogeneity in worker-firm-specific preferences (non-wage amenities), (2) firm granularity, and (3) off-...