This paper studies the impact of an increase in the enforcement of labor regulations on unemployment and inequality, using city level data from Brazil. We find that stricter enforcement (affecting the payment of mandated benefits to formal workers) leads to: higher unemployment, less income...

How does enforcement of labor regulations shape the labor market effects of trade? To tackle this question, we exploit the Brazilian trade liberalization episode and exogenous variation in the intensity of both the trade shock and enforcement across local labor markets. Regions with stricter...

This paper exploits variation in timing and outcomes of employment discrimination lawsuits against US law enforcement agencies to estimate the cumulative employment effects of temporary, externally-imposed affirmative action (AA). To estimate persistent effects, we focus on AA termination, but...

This paper analyzed the OECD data on employment protection for 23 OECD countries over the time span 1990-2008 on the basis of alternative dynamic panel data models and panel causality tests and examines the validity of the neo-liberal argument that strictness of employment protection hurts labor...

This paper tests whether the job security offered by stricter employment protection legislation (EPL) undermines positive compensating wage differentials that would otherwise be paid. Specifically, we ask whether industries with relatively more need for layoffs and labour flexibility have lower...

Consider an employer who wants her employee to work hard. As is well known from the efficiency wage literature, the employer must pay the (wealth-constrained) employee a positive rent to provide incentives for exerting unobservable effort. Alternatively, the employer could make effort observable...