This study analyzes real wage cyclicality for male full-time workers within employer-employeematches in Germany over the period 1984-2004. Five different wage measures arecompared: the standard hourly wage rate; hourly wage earnings including overtime andbonus pay; the effective wage, which takes...

We develop entrepreneurship and institutional theory to explain variation in different types ofentrepreneurship across individuals and institutional contexts. Our framework generateshypotheses about the negative impact of higher levels of corruption, weaker property rightsand especially...

In-work benefits are becoming an increasingly relevant labour market policy, graduallyexpanding in scope and geographical coverage. This paper investigates the equilibriumimpact of in-work benefits and contrasts it with the traditional partial equilibrium analysis. Wefind under which conditions...

Using firm-level data from nine developing countries we demonstrate that (a) certaininstitutions like restrictive labour market regulations that are considered to be bad foreconomic growth might be beneficial for production efficiency, whereas (b) good businessenvironment which is considered to...

A personal bankruptcy law that allows for a “fresh start” after bankruptcy reduces theindividual risk involved in entrepreneurial activity. On the other hand, as risk shifts to creditorswho recover less of their credit after a debtor’s bankruptcy, lenders may charge higherinterest rates or...

In this paper we will look at job creation and destruction in firms. We will answer the questionif it is the large companies that create jobs, while the smaller companies are contributingmuch less. Or is it the young companies that create jobs? And who destroys the most jobs?In the crisis...

The introduction of firm size into labor search models raises the question how wages are setwhen average and marginal product differ. We develop and analyze an alternative to theexisting bargaining framework: Firms compete for labor by publicly posting long- termcontracts. In such a competitive...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result ofdifferences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that pavesthe debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, weestimate labor supply...

Using nine years of personnel records from a regional grocery store chain in the UnitedStates, this study examines the effect of manager ethnicity on the ethnic composition ofemployment at the firm’s 73 stores. We estimate separate models with store fixed effects forseveral departments and job...

Firms in Kenya rely on technologies such as computers, cell-phones, and generators toovercome constraints associated with regulations, infrastructure, security, workforce,corruption, and finance. This study shows that such reliance has significant positive impactson productivity as measured by...