This paper examines whether firms exhibit less tax aggressiveness in order to mitigate workers' exposure to unemployment risk. We use unemployment insurance (UI) benefit laws as a proxy for unemployment risk and multiple measures of tax aggressiveness. Given that tax aggressiveness is risky and...

This paper analyzes the impact of labor market competition and skill-biased technical change on the structure of compensation. The model combines multitasking and screening, embedded into a Hotelling-like framework. Competition for the most talented workers leads to an escalating reliance on...

We estimate the effects on wage and employment growth rates of the introduction and subsequent increases of a substantial minimum wage in the main construction industry of Germany. Using a regional dataset constructed from individual employment histories, we exploit the spatial dimension and...

This paper presents a general equilibrium assignment model of workers to tasks with endogenous supply of skills. The model has 2 key features. First, skills are endogenous and multidimensional. Second, two types of assignment occur; workers self-select the type of skills to supply and firms...

This paper measures risk in the present value of workers’ remaining lifetime earnings. Building upon a common earnings specification, our estimate combines flexible, heterogeneous forecasts of individuals’ expected earnings growth rates and the variances of potential permanent and temporary...

Pure wage rent, defined as labor pricing that chronically exceeds market-opportunity cost, is an outcome of rational employer-employee interaction in information-challenged workplaces. It is an essential concept, integral to the analysis of important economic phenomena, consistent with available...

There exists large and persistent variation in not only how, but when employees are paid, a fact largely unexplored by theory. This paper develops a theory of optimal pay timing when workers make time-inconsistent savings and borrowing decisions. The model justifies the existence of a wide range...

The canonical supply-demand model of the wage returns to skill has been extremely influential; however, it has faced several important challenges. Several studies show that the standard approach sometimes produces theoretically wrong-signed elasticities of substitution, yields counterintuitive...

We analyze optimal redistribution in the presence of labor market signaling where innate productive ability is not only unobserved by the government, but also by prospective employers. Signaling in both one and two dimensions is considered, where in the latter case firms have an informational...

We study, theoretically and empirically, the effects of incentives on the self-selection and coordination of motivated agents to produce a social good. Agents join teams where they allocate effort to either generate individual monetary rewards (selfish effort) or contribute to the production of...