Immigrants are widely perceived as being highly entrepreneurial and important for economic growth and innovation. This is reflected in immigration policies and many developed countries have created special visas and entry requirements in an attempt to attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Not...

The very first minimum wage in Germany was introduced in 1997 for blue-collar workers in sub-sectors of the construction industry. In the setting of a natural experiment blue-collar workers in neighboring 4-digit-industries and white-collar workers are used as control groups for...

This paper uses two representative household budget surveys from the Kyrgyz Republic to analyze factors influencing participation and returns from different types of nonfarm activities in 2005 and 2006. Nonfarm activities are found to be most important for the poor, who are pushed out of...

Studies using data from the early 1990s suggested that while the progressive Social Security benefit formula succeeded in redistributing benefits from individuals with high earnings to individuals with low earnings, it was much less successful in redistributing benefits from households with high...

Social Security has made it possible for the vast majority of workers to enjoy a period of retirement in at least modest comfort without relying on their children for support. The average length of retirement has increased consistently since the program was started in 1937. However, the increase...

There is enormous public confusion (much of it deliberately cultivated) about the extent of Social Security’s projected shortfall. Many policymakers and analysts point out that projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Trustees show the program to be out of...

Occupational licensing is among the fastest-growing labor market institutions in the U.S. economy. One of the key features of occupational licensing is that the law determines who gets to do the work. In those cases where universally licensed occupations are both complements to and substitutes...

This work tries to shed some light on the decision of becoming self-employed with and without employees, distinguishing between paid-employment and unemployment as starting status and exploring if the exposure to foreign competition also influences this decision. In doing so, we apply binary and...

Immigrants are widely perceived as being highly entrepreneurial and important for economic growth and innovation. This is reflected in immigration policies and many developed countries have created special visas and entry requirements in an attempt to attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Not...

Democratic society requires individuals to be autonomous, and those with greater resources are likely to enjoy greater autonomy. Democracy also assumes that individuals will participate in the affairs of their community, i.e. there will be civic engagement. But civic engagement may also be...