The debate in Australia on the (constant-output) elasticity of labour demand with respect to wages has wrongly sidelined the role of capital stock as a determinant of employment (Webster, 2003). As far back as 1991, Pissarides had argued that the influence of capital stock on the performance of...

H. Gregg Lewis did fundamental research outlining the economic effects of trade unions and considering how to measure them carefully. He also laid out the theory of the supply and demand for labor in careful detail that has underlain economists' thinking about these outcomes. Aside from...

We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of labor market speeddates where unemployed workers meet temporary employment agencies. Our analysis shows that participation in such events increases immediate job finding by 6-7 percentage points. In the subsequent months, employment...

Information asymmetries can prevent markets from operating efficiently. An important example is the labor market, where employers face uncertainty about the productivity of job candidates. We examine theoretically and with laboratory experiments three key questions related to hiring via...

This paper reviews the role of locus of control in the labor market. I begin with a discussion of the conceptual origins of locus of control, including its relationship to related concepts such as self-efficacy, motivation, and self-control. The relationship between locus of control and labor...

A tax shifting from labour income to housing taxation is generally advocated on efficiency grounds. However, most of the empirical literature focuses on the distributional implications of property tax reforms without paying much attention to potential consequences on the labour market. The aim...

The theory of compensating differentials has proven difficult to test with observational data: the consequences of selection, unobserved firm and worker characteristics, and the broader macroeconomic environment complicate most analyses. Instead, we construct experimental, real-effort labor...

This paper constructs a theoretical labor market model for China, and utilizes the model to examine the effects of various labor market policies on economic well-being. Two key features of the model are a segmented labor market involving three sectors – state-owned enterprises, private...

This survey focuses on experimental labor markets investigating two aspects that deem us important for a better understanding of labor market relations and the consequences for labor market policies. The first part of the survey is dedicated to papers that assess the prevalence of reciprocal...