The composite indicator "Quality of work" for comparing European countries is constructed from data of the Third European Survey on Working Conditions. The main findings are as follows: (a) European countries differ with respect to working conditions statistically more signi¯cantly than with...

We investigate the positive and normative consequences of child-labor restrictions foreconomic aggregates and welfare. We argue that even though the laissez-faire outcome maybe inefficient, there are usually better policies to cure these inefficiencies than the impositionof a child-labor ban...

In order to address the impact of regulation on ethical concerns of consumers, westudy the e¤ect of a minimum wage. In our experimental market, consumers havemonopsony power, firms engage in Bertrand competition, and workers are passiverecipients of a wage payment. Two treatments are employed,...

Econometric evaluations of public-sponsored training programmes generally find littleevidence of an impact of such policies on transition rates out of unemployment. We performthe first evaluation of training effects for the unemployed adults in France, exploiting a uniquelongitudinal dataset...

Germany and France are both Continental European welfare states with severe labor marketproblems such as low employment and high and persistent unemployment which can beexplained by labor market institutions that inhibit labor market adaptability...

Germany exhibits a strong reduction in domestic manufacturing production depth (bazaareffect). I argue that this reflects an unbundling of comparative advantage. Using a modelwhere Ricardian plus Heckscher-Ohlin-type comparative advantage relates to fragments ofproduction, I compare a trading...

This paper investigates the effects of services offshoring on wages using individual level data combined with industry information on offshoring. Our results show that services offshoring affects the real wage of low and medium skilled individuals negatively...

An interesting puzzle is that trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has been associated with a sharp increase in the skill premium in both developed and developing countries.This is in contrast with neoclassical theory, according to which trade should increase therelative return of the...

This paper studies how dierent unionisation structures aect rm productivity, rmperformance, and consumer welfare in a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneousrms and free entry. While centralised bargaining induces tougher selection among hetero-geneous producers and thus increases...

In the last decades, international trade has increased between industrialised countries andbetween high- and low-wage countries. This important change has raised questions on howinternational trade affects the labour market. In this spirit, this paper aims to investigate theimpact of...