Collective dismissal costs are an important part of employment protection legislation (EPL) and make firms' exit more costly. We show in a model with step-by-step innovations that dismissal costs spur innovation if product markets are not too competitive: technologically more advanced firms...

The effects of competition on growth are analyzed in the recent literature by comparing economies with the same market structure but different degrees of substitutability. In this note, we show that in a general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition – la Dixit- Stiglitz the effect of...

Smoother labor incomes alleviate credit constraints by reducing workers' desire to borrow, and prospects of upward income mobility have smaller beneficial effects for currently poor workers when borrowing constraints are binding. These simple theoretical insights are consistent with the...

In this paper we investigate the importance of labor market institutions such as unemployment insurance, unions, firing regulation and minimum wages for the evolution of wage inequality across countries. We derive a simple log-linear equation of the wage differential as a function of the...

Microeconomic theory predicts that under certain regularity conditions higher idiosyncratic risk increases the propensity to insure against independent marketable risks. We apply these predictions to the specific case of labor income risk and car insurance using data from the UK. The main...

This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of trade versus technological change on wage differentials. We propose an explanation of the stylized facts which is based on interactions between openness and technological change because of labor market institutions and government...

We analyze dynamic interactions between market insurance, the stock of insurable assets and liquid wealth accumulation in a model with non-durable and durable consumption. The stock of the durable is exposed to risk against which households can insure. Since the model does not have a closed form...

It is commonly argued that labor market institutions such as employment protection worsen an economy?s performance and particularly so, if product markets become more competitive. Empirical evidence, however, has difficulties to detect a robust negative correlation between employment protection...

Defensive innovations in developed countries can explain the empirical phenomenon that openness towards trade with less-developed countries does not necessarily induce a substantial increase in the wage differential and trade volumes. Building on step-by-step innovations as introduced by Aghion...

Interest rates on consumer lending are lower when funds are tied to purchase of a durable good than when they are made available on an unconditional basis. Further, dealers often choose to bear the financial cost of their customers? credit purchases. This paper interprets this phenomenon in...