According to French law, employers have to pay at least six months salary to employees whose seniority exceeds two years in case of unfair dismissal. We show, relying on data, that this regulation entails a hike in severance payments at two-year seniority which induces a significant rise in the...

Discrimination against women is seen as one of the possible causes behind their underrepresentation in certain STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects. We show that this is not the case at the competitive exams used to recruit almost all French secondary and...

We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment accounts (UA) system. Under the UA system, employed people are required to make ongoing contributions to their UAs and the balances in these accounts are available to them during...