In this paper we investigate the recent fall in unemployment, and the rise in part-time work, labour market participation, inequality and welfare in Germany. Unemployment fell because the Hartz IV reform induced a large fraction of the long-term unemployed to deregister as jobseekers and appear as non-participants. Yet, labour force...
This paper assesses the effect of key demographic changes (population ageing and upskilling) that are expected by 2030 on the income distribution in the EU-27 and examines the potential of tax-benefit systems to counterbalance negative developments. Theory predicts that population ageing should increase income inequality, while the effect of up-skilling...
Given asymmetric information, this paper explores the need for non-tenure-track jobs in academia alongside the usual tenure-track positions. It also explains the coexistence of these two types of jobs in research universities as an equilibrium phenomenon. The increased effort needed to produce research, accompanied by imprecisions in the academic editorial...
Despite rapidly rising female educational attainment and the closing if not reversal of the gender gap in education, female labor force participation rates in the MENA region remain low and stagnant, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the "MENA paradox." Even if increases in participation are observed,...
Using data on the near-universe of online US job vacancies collected by Burning Glass Technologies in 2016, we calculate labor market concentration using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) for each commuting zone by 6-digit SOC occupation. The average market has an HHI of 3,953, or the equivalent of 2.5 recruiting employers....
This study examines the potential impact of works councils and unions on the deployment of fixed-term contracts and agency temps. We report inter al. that works councils are associated with a higher number of temporary agency workers when demand volatility is high while the opposite holds for fixed-term contracts. These...
Analysing the Indian labour market poses inherent challenges given the country's size and diversity. Rather than a case of "jobless growth", India has experienced concentrated employment growth, mainly in urban areas and for men. This has been accompanied by a decline in the female labour force participation rate, which emerged...
What are the effects of universal and permanent cash transfers on the labor market? Since 1982, all Alaskan residents have been entitled to a yearly cash dividend from the Alaska Permanent Fund. Using data from the Current Population Survey and a synthetic control method, we show that the dividend had...
We examine long-term implications of unemployment for material conditions and well-being using the Polish sample from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Retrospective data from the SHARELIFE survey are used to reconstruct labour market experiences across the threshold of the socio-economic transformation from a centrally planned...
This paper develops a model encompassing both Becker's matching model, and Tinbergen-Rosen's hedonic model. We study its properties and provide identification and estimation strategies. Using data on internal migration in China, we estimate the model and compute equilibrium under counter-factual alternatives to decompose the migration surplus. Our findings reveal that...
A large literature exploits geographic variation in the concentration of immigrants to identify their impact on a variety of outcomes. To address the endogeneity of immigrants' location choices, the most commonly-used instrument interacts national inflows by country of origin with immigrants' past geographic distribution. We present evidence that estimates based...
Internally displaced people (IDPs) constitute a serious economic, social and cultural problem for many countries, including countries in transition. Despite the importance of the problem, there are only a handful of previous studies investigating the issue of labor market outcomes of IDPs. We aim to fill this gap in the...
This paper studies changes in computer use and job quality in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015. We document that while the proportion of workers using computers has increased from 40% to more than 60% over twenty years, there remain significant differences between countries even within the same occupations. Several...
Several studies using observational data suggest that ethnic discrimination increases in downturns of the economy. We investigate whether ethnic discrimination depends on labor market tightness using data from correspondence studies. We utilize three correspondence studies of the Swedish labor market and two different measures of labor market tightness. These two...
The question of whether and how living in a deprived neighborhood affects the labor market outcomes of its residents has been a subject of great interest for both policy makers and researchers. Despite this interest, empirical evidence of causal neighborhood effects on labor market outcomes is scant, and causal evidence...
As skills of labor-market entrants are usually not directly observed by employers, individuals acquire skill signals. To study which signals are valued by employers, we simultaneously and independently randomize a broad range of skill signals on pairs of resumes of fictitious applicants among which we ask a large representative sample...
Striving for gender equality presents major challenges but the benefits are vast, ranging from reduced conflict, both within and between communities, to higher economic growth. Unfortunately, Israel's gender wage gap remains one of the highest among developed countries, despite a growing reverse gender gap in educational attainment. Investigating the gender...
This paper takes advantage of access to detailed matched bank-firm data to investigate whether and how employment decisions of SMEs have been affected by credit constraints in the wake of the Great Recession. Variability in banks' financial health following the 2008 crisis is used as an exogenous determinant of firms'...
A lack of job security is an increasingly prevalent characteristic of modern labour markets, and there is evidence that recent financial crises have exacerbated this issue. In this paper, we assess how exogenous changes in the macroeconomic environment affect workers' perceived job security, and the impact of job security on...
This paper examines informality during the political and economic turmoil that accompanied the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. The paper focuses on unprotected employment and the extent to which it changed by educational level right after the January Uprising of 2011. We find that over time and particularly after the...