We show in a monopsony model that a minimum wage may raise hours which are already too high but has ambiguous effects on the number of employees and utility. Employment subsidies, in contrast, unambiguously improve worker utility and bring the market equilibrium closer to the efficient outcome.

Using a standard production function the equilibrium hours per worker wage locus is shown to be u-shaped in a competitive labour market. A minimum wage mayth us either increase or decrease hours per worker and, by extension, the number of workers. We provide supporting evidence for this using...

We show in a theoretical efficiency wage model where firms differ in monitoring intensity or in the effort intensity of their technologies that the impact of monitoring intensity on wages is ambiguous, a result that mirrors evidence from the empirical literature. We argue that to correctly...

In this paper, we examine the role of industrial clusters and infrastructure in mitigating or magnifying the impact of the 1995 Kobe earthquake on the survival of manufacturing plants and their post-earthquake economic performance. Our methodological approach is to use information on...

We examine the relationship between contracting out and the wage elasticity of labor demand in outsourcing plants. A simple theoretical model suggests that firms engaged in contracting out have lower wage elasticities. Estimating plant level dynamic labor demand equations for Irish manufacturing...

This paper analyses and compares the dynamics of agglomeration in Portuguese and Irish manufacturing industries between 1985 and 1998 implementing Dumais, Ellison and Glaeser (2002) methodology. Using comparable and exhaustive micro-level data sets, we find that s industries tend to be subject...

Using plant-level data for the Irish manufacturing sector over the period 1983-98, we study the coagglomeration of domestic plants and foreign multinationals in Ireland. To this end we make use of the index developed by Ellison and Glaeser (1997) and find coagglomeration to be important for a...

We investigate the role that climatic change has played in the pattern of urbanization in sub- Saharan African countries compared to the rest of the developing world. To this end we assemble a cross-country panel data set that allows us to estimate the determinants of urbanization. The results...

While there have been some references in the literature to the potential role of the general decline in rainfall in sub-Saharan African nations on their poor growth performance relative to other developing countries, this avenue remains empirically unexplored. In this paper we use a new...

We investigate and compare the spatial distribution of manufacturing activity and its determinants in Belguim, Ireland, and Portugal using comparable, exhaustive micro-level data sets.We find some similarities between Portugal and Belguim, but little for Ireland. Moreover, there is some evidence...