Labor markets around the world have become increasingly integrated over the last two decades, with the entry of China, India and the former Eastern bloc into the world trading system, the removal of restrictions on trade and capital flows, and rapid technological progress. At the same time, the...

I review theories and evidence on labor market policies and institutions in an international context. These include collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection laws, unemployment insurance (UI), mandated parental leave, and active labor market policies. Scandinavia and Central...

I review theories and evidence on wage-setting institutions and labor market policies in an international comparative context. These include collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection laws, unemployment insurance (UI), mandated parental leave, and active labor market policies...

This paper presents a comparative study of private returns to schooling of urban men in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey using similar survey data and a uniform methodology. We employ three surveys for each country that span nearly two decades, from the 1980s to 2006, and, to increase the comparability...

This paper gauges the potential effects on employment of rebalancing China's exportoriented growth model toward domestic demand, particularly private consumption. Shifting to a private consumption-led growth likely means more demand for existing and new services as well as reorienting the...

This paper explores the impact of country size on labor market flexibility in a monetary union with a common monetary policy as conducted in EMU. I apply a Barro-Gordon framework and test its result empirically for EMU. Results confirm that small countries demand higher labor market flexibility...

Facing a stochastic market wage, which is independent of their own hiring policy, employers offer contracts specifying ï¬xed wage, revenue share and employment duration. In ongoing employment relations it depends on the treatment whether ï¬xed wages can be only increased or also decreased....

This paper examines the relationship between unemployment and labor market flexibility. The latter is considered in the broadest sense - as it relates to labor markets at large (external flexibility) and to practices within firms (internal flexibility). The first part of the paper addresses the...

Using data from the Italian Institute of Statistics, I examine the cyclical properties of three labor inputs - regular employees, regular self-employed, and underground workers. Results support the widespread view that, in Italy, the shadow employment functions as an improper tool for increasing...

This Selected Issues paper describes labor market trends in Belarus and the role of labor market institutions in the outcome. The paper examines the current status of the tax system in Belarus and assesses recent efforts to reform it. It argues that the current tax system in Belarus is...