This study uses rich information on performance outcomes to estimate the effect of bonus pay on worker productivity. We use a policy discontinuity in the call centre of a multi-national telephone company in which management introduced monetary bonuses upon achieving pre-defined performance...

Sharing the available stock of work more fairly is a popular concern in the public policy debate. One policy proposal is to reduce overtime work in order to allow the employment of more people. This paper suggests that such a concept faces major problems. Using Germany as a case study, it is...

Higher wages increase labor costs but improve the productivity of the labor force through several channels. If firms take this into account and set their wages accordingly, the resulting wages may fail to adjust demand and supply but may engender phenomena like over-education, discrimination,...

This paper follows up recent work on the relationship between (un-)employment and wage effects of social security financing undertaken by the OECD Jobs Study. Based on a simple macroeconometric model of the labour market, I investigate whether the peculiar OECD results for Germany on the...

Over the past decades, commuting has become more and more important as a means for labor market adjustment. This is reflected in increasing commuter shares and distances. Nevertheless, identifying the determinants of commuting distances is by no means straightforward due to complex job and...

Using the data covering the time period from 1996 till 2011, I estimate a spatial autoregressive model of wages' growth rates across Russian cities. I find that wages in Russian cities exhibit convergence. I also test whether city population (which is a proxy for city size) has positive impact...

There have been continuous deregulation efforts concerning temporary agency employment in almost all European countries aiming at an increasing flexibility in the European labor markets. This paper theoretically investigates the effects of a legal deregulation of temporary agency employment on...

This paper deals with the question whether firms' employment performance in the periods preceding their exit can be regarded as casting a 'Shadow of Death' on their final leaving the market. This aspect is of high relevance for politicians and other decision-makers, because by knowing more about...

This paper presents a simple two country model in which firms in manufacturing sector choose a technology level (high or low). I show how trade integration and productivity differential affect technology choice clearly. In particular, if the gap of productivity of high technology is medium,...

Motivated by the high public employment, and the public wage premia observed in Europe, a Real-Business-Cycle model, calibrated to German data (1970-2007), is set up with a richer government spending side, and an endogenous private-public sector labor choice. To illustrate the effects of fiscal...