The study of the employment relation has always held a somewhat ambiguous position within the field of economics. The nature of labour market adjustment processes and unique aspects of the employment relation have posed problems for standard economic theories and have limited the use of formal...

Until passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), regulating the employment of non-citizens was held to be only a “peripheral concern” of the immigration statute. Beginning in 1987, United States employers were subject to sanctions for the hiring of undocumented...

A principal often needs to match agents to perform coordinated tasks, but agents can quit or slack off if they dislike their match. We study two prevalent approaches for matching within organizations: Centralized assignment by firm leaders and self-organization through market-like mechanisms. We...

We investigate the labour market for Uber drivers in Australia using administrative and survey data. Uber drivers’ total hours of work and driving schedules exhibit substantial heterogeneity and week-to-week variation. We identify several pathways to driving with Uber, associated with...

Improving schools depends on attracting high-caliber teachers and increasing retention, both made possible by appealing to teacher preferences. I deploy a discrete-choice experiment in a setting where teachers have reason to reveal their preferences. There are three main findings: (1) I...

This paper provides both descriptive and empirical evidence about the main youth labour market problems in Spain. Using the experiences of other EU economies as a benchmark, we document the performance of Spain as regards a wide set of youth labour market dimensions. These include employment and...

Recent research on the Great Depression emphasizes the role New Deal economic policy played in slowing recovery. Policies promoting cartels and higher wage rates during a time that the economy was experiencing unprecedented unemployment were likely to have created a negative supply shock that...

Unemployment is at a low and stable level in Denmark. This achievement is often attributed to the so-called flexicurity model combining flexible hiring and firing rules for employers with income security for employees. Whatever virtues this model may have, a low and stable unemployment rate is...

We use firm-level data from 10 European countries to establish several new stylized facts about firms’ labor market power. First, we find the pervasive presence of labor market power across countries and sectors, measured by average and median markdowns above unity. Second, focusing on the...