In these tough economic times, employers have responded by pursuing four-day work weeks and other mechanisms that change the components of the standard five-day work week. Although four-day work weeks provide some savings in the form of reduced operating and energy costs and have received recent...

Over the past year or so, a conventional wisdom has developed about the status of the legal job market. This conventional wisdom has at least three components: (1) Recent graduates are getting law jobs at distressingly low levels. (2) The legal job market is undergoing a profound structural...

Standard economic analysis holds that labor market rigidities are harmful for job creation and typically increase unemployment. But many orthodox reforms of the labor market have proved difficult to implement because of political opposition. For these reasons it is important to explain why we...

In most European countries, money wages are given in collective agreements or individual employment contracts, and the employer cannot unilaterally cut wages, even after the expiration of a collective agreement. Ceteris paribus, workers have a stronger bargaining position when they try to...

In this paper, I analyze the pros and cons of implementing structural reforms of the labor market in booms vs. recessions, in light of considerations of social efficiency, political viability, and macroeconomic fine tuning. While the optimal timing of a reform depends on the relative importance...

How have labor market institutions and welfare-state transfers affected jobs and productivity in Europe? Many studies have tackled this question, with mixed results. This paper proposes an eclectic approach and gives a clearer answer to the issue.Orthodox criticisms of European government...

Will the internet, robotics and artificial intelligence mean a ‘jobless future'? A recent narrative, endorsed by prominent tech-billionaires, says we face mass unemployment, and we need a basic income. In contrast, this article shows why the law can achieve full employment with fair incomes,...

Will the internet, robotics and artificial intelligence mean a ‘jobless future'? A recent narrative, endorsed by prominent tech-billionaires, says we face mass unemployment, and we need a basic income. In contrast, this article shows why the law can achieve full employment with fair incomes,...

Using nationally representative survey data on 11,505 labor force participants in 2014, we examine the use, implementation, and labor market outcomes associated with noncompete agreements. Nearly 1 in 5 labor force participants are bound by noncompetes, and nearly 40% have agreed to at least one...

Using a newly assembled 50 country firm-level database spanning 19 years, we document a “bright side” for employees of business group affiliated firms: less pronounced fluctuations in employment than unaffiliated firms in response to macroeconomic shocks. The results are robust to a variety...