Minimum wage policy is regarded as an essential policy tool for improving the welfare of low-paid workers and reducing working poverty and inequality within the labour market. The Government of India recently undertook reforms in the country's wage policy and enacted the Code on Wages in August...

This paper presents a capability-augmented model of on the job search, in which sweatshop conditions stifle the capability of the working poor to search for a job while on the job. The augmented setting unveils a sweatshop equilibrium in an otherwise archetypal Burdett-Mortensen economy, and...

This paper presents a capability-augmented model of on the job search, in which sweatshop conditions stifle the capability of the working poor to search for a job while on the job. The augmented setting unveils a sweatshop equilibrium in an otherwise archetypal Burdett-Mortensen economy, and...

This paper explores, both theoretically and empirically, how firing costs affect worker productivity and turnover. We develop a model in which workers are essential to knowledge transfer between firms and worker effort is firm-specific in the sense that a worker can be fired before reaping the...

We collect rich establishment-level data about advance layoff notices filed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act since January 1990. We present in-sample evidence that the number of workers affected by WARN notices leads state-level initial unemployment insurance...

Most corporate tax codes constrain capital investment because the cost of capital investment is usually not fully deductible from taxable income. We examine whether firms avoid taxes to loosen such tax code constraints on their investment. Exploiting increases in capital investment incentives...

I exploit the adoption of state-level labor protection laws as an exogenous increase in employee firing costs to examine how the costs associated with discharging workers affect capital structure decisions. I find that firms reduce debt ratios following the adoption of these laws, with this...

Examining a sample of 87,288 firm-year observations between 1969 and 2003, we find that firms slow the speed of adjustment toward their optimal cash holdings following the state’s adoption of labor protection laws. This effect is more pronounced for firms subjected to financial...

Workers value job security. If at least some workers value it enough, then it is efficient for at least some firms to adopt policies in which they commit (implicitly or explicitly) not to dismiss employees except for “just-cause,” as opposed to policies in which employers are free to dismiss...

While previous work suggests two competing explanations for the effect of labor market regulation on firms' demand for debt, our results reconcile both the “strategic use of debt” and “financial flexibility” view. Exploiting staggered changes to labor laws in 28 OECD countries, we find...