While results are starting to emerge, not much is known yet about the dynamics of the labormarkets of the former Eastern economies, especially in the context of the current FinancialCrisis. Arguably, this is mainly due to paucity of (panel) data. By examining labor markettransitions, earnings...

With decreasing migration costs and fiscal decentralisation on the policy agenda in variousOECD countries, the impact of taxation on migration is of growing interest. Empirical studieson this topic have been limited due to a lack of comparable data in an international contextand a lack of...

We consider the welfare effects of skilled worker emigration in a context where skilled labor plays a role in product design. We show such emigration can benefit the residents left behind, even when consumers tastes exhibit a form of home bias...

Two stylized representations are often found in the academic and policy literature oninformality and formality in developing countries. The first is that the informal (or unregulated)sector is more competitive than the formal (or regulated) sector. The second is that contractenforcement is...

Building a model with three imperfect markets – goods, labor and credit – representing aproduct’s life-cycle, we find that goods market frictions drastically change the qualitative andquantitative dynamics of labor market variables. The calibrated model leads to a significantreduction in...

Unemployment may depend on equilibrium in other markets than the labor markets. Thispaper adresses this old idea by introducing search frictions on several markets: in a model ofcredit and labor market imperfections as in Wasmer and Weil (2004), I further introducesearch on the goods market. The...

This paper assesses the impact of product market competition on job instability as proxied bythe use of fixed-term labor contracts. Using both worker data from the Spanish Labor ForceSurvey and firm data from the Spanish Business Strategies Survey, I show that job instabilityrises with...

We estimate the effects of labor market entry conditions on wages for male individuals firstentering the Austrian labor market between 1978 and 2000. We find a large negative effect ofunfavorable entry conditions on starting wages as well as a sizeable negative long-run effect.Specifically, we...

This paper documents a robust empirical regularity: in the long-run, higher trade openness iscausally associated to a lower structural rate of unemployment. We establish this fact using:(i) panel data from 20 OECD countries, (ii) cross-sectional data on a larger set of countries.The time...

We study the impact of tax and minimum wage reforms on the incidence of informality. Togauge the incidence of informality, we use measures of the extent of tax evasion, the extentof minimum wage non-compliance, and the size of the informal workforce. Our approachallows us to examine (i) the...