Four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied: social experiments, natural experiments, matching methods, and instrumental variables. In each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number...

This paper examines the effects of collectively agreed increases in real minimum wages on employment transitions and hours among manual workers in the Swedish retail sector over the period 2001-05. The findings indicate that increases in real minimum wages are associated with more separations,...

Over the last twenty years we have seen an increasing use of in-work tax subsidies to encourage labor supply among low-income groups. In Sweden, a non-targeted earned income tax credit was introduced in 2007, and was reinforced in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The stated motive of the reform was to boost...

Between 1972 and 1978 U.S. high schools rapidly increased their female athletic participation rates - to approximately the same level as their male athletic participation rates - in order to comply with Title IX, a policy change that provides a unique quasi-experiment in female athletic...

Using European Community Household Panel data for nine countries for 1996-2001, I investigate the impact of reforms of employment protection systems on employment and on temporary jobs for wage and salary workers. Individual fixed effects models are estimated, with the inclusion of...

We study the labor supply effects of a change in child-subsidy policy designed to both increase fertility and shorten birth-related employment interruptions. The reform yields most of the intended effects.

The majority of the Member States of the European Union have undertaken remarkably comprehensive welfare and labor market reforms in the years since the 1990s. Many of these reforms, however, have not followed the conventional retrenchment and deregulation recipes, but rather took a liking to...

The world's biggest and arguably most aggressive form of employment based affirmative action policy for minorities exists in India. This paper exploits the institutional features of federally mandated employment quota policy to examine its effect on labor market outcomes of two distinct minority...

We study the labor supply effects of a major change in child-subsidy policy in Germany in 2007 designed to both increase fertility and shorten birth-related employment interruptions. The reform involved a move from a means-tested maternity leave benefit system that paid a maximum of 300 Euro for...

Since formal laws can be observed or ignored to varying degrees, the actual enforcement regime shapes incentives and constraints. Most of the studies exploring EPL effects on labour market performance implicitly assume that EPL compliance is near to complete and therefore all firms bear full...