We present the first panel estimates of the productivity effects of the unique German institution of parity, board-level co-determination. Although our data span two severe recessions when labour hoarding costs of co-determination are probably highest, and the panel is too short to capture the...

Job-satisfaction as a component of workers' utility has been strangely neglected, with work usually regarded as reducing utility and the benefits of leisure. This is contradicted by many empirical studies showing that unemployment is a major cause of unhappiness, even when income is controlled...

The paper makes three contributions to the economics literature on entrepreneurship. We offer a new measure of entrepreneurship which accounts for variations in persistence in self-employment. We outline an econometric methodology to account for this approach and find that it is superior to...

This paper uses a panel of about 6000 French establishments to test some implications of the modern theory of dynamic monopsony or upward sloping labour supply curves for average firm wages. Panel estimates provide strong evidence of a much larger long run employer size - wage effect (ESWE) than...

Few skilled workers in the UK have flexible working time GPs are the exception most can only choose between unemployment, or full-time work, which has changed little in recent years, while part time work is mainly unskilled. This market rigidity imposes major welfare losses, in contrast to...

In a model with heterogeneous workers and both intensive and extensive margins of employment, we consider two systems of redistribution: a universal basic income, and a categorical unemployment benefit. Well-being depends on own-consumption relative to average employed workers' consumption, and...

We compare two systems of income redistribution: unemployment benefits (UB) and basic income (BI). First, for a simple utility function, with both intensive and extensive margins, the unemployed are likely better off with pure BI than pure UB, regardless of labour supply elasticity and wage...

We first confirm previous results with the German Socio-Economic Panel by Layard, et al. (2010), and obtain strong negative effects of comparison income. However, when we split the sample by age, we find quite different results for reference income. The effects on life-satisfaction are positive...

Disaggregated data from 30 two-digit manufacturing industries in the east and west parts of unified Germany are used to estimate employment for three skill categories of blue collar workers. Employment elasticities are uniformly higher in the east, and for unskilled labor. The former result...