Three fundamental forces have shaped labor markets over the last 50 years: the secular increase in the returns to education, educational upgrading, and the integration of large numbers of women into the workforce. We modify the Katz and Murphy (1992) framework to predict the structure of the...

This paper presents and tests a model that may partially explain why the demand for labor adapts to the availability of labor. In particular, I postulate that the cost of hiring declines with increases in the amount of labor available. The cost of hiring would decrease with a growth in available...

We analyze the effect of local-level labor market concentration on wages. Using plant-level U.S. Census data over the period 1978–2016, we find that: (1) local-level employer concentration exhibits substantial cross-sectional variation; (2) consistent with labor market monopsony power, there...

We document considerable heterogeneity in the fraction of older workers across occupations, and show that this is related to occupational characteristics. For example, occupations that have larger fractions of older workers tend to be less physically demanding and more cognitively demanding....

Human Resources officers report occupational shortage to be the main cause of unfilled vacancies. Yet, it is not clear whether these are empty complaints or actually lead to effective wage and employment adjustments over time. By crossing data from the UK Employer Skill Survey with the UK Labor...

Labor markets in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe underwent a dramatic transformation. Notably, this transformation took place within just a few years. Until the mid-2000s job opportunities were scarce and unemployment was high. But since then labor demand has picked up and...

Uncertainty affects employers' decisions on labour workforce, as it does on capital. We exploit differences on how firms adjust their labour work-force when uncertainty increases. Using data from the Wage Dynamic Network Survey for 25 European countries, we first construct, opposite to usual...

In recent years, the labour market in Romania became more and more tense, with growing labour shortages affecting the development of many important sectors. This paper is focusing on the labour market imbalances, specifying the main landmarks of labour shortages and highlighting their conditions...

This paper documents the changing structure of wages in India over the post-reform era, the roughly two-decade period since 1993. To investigate the factors underlying these changes, a supply-demand framework is applied at the level of the Indian state. While real wages have risen across India...