We estimate the impact of hurricane strikes on local economic growth rates and how this is reflected in more aggregate growth patterns. To this end we assemble a panel data set of US coastal counties’ growth rates and construct a hurricane destruction index that is based on a monetary loss...

This paper investigates the link between nationality of ownership and wage elasticities of labour demand at the level of the plant. In particular, we examine whether labour demand in multinationals becomes less elastic with respect to the wage if the plant has backward linkages with the local...

In this paper we analyse the impact of governmental grant provision on plant performance. To this end we utilise rich information derived from three data sources for the manufacturing sector in Ireland, where grant provision has been an important part of the industrial policy. We use a matching...

Using comparable data sets for five African countries we estimate, and evaluate possible explanations for, the employer size wage effect across these. Our results indicate, just as has been generally found for other developing and developed nations, that apart from observable worker...

In monopsony models of the labour market either a minimum wage or an employment subsidy financed by a lump sum tax on profits can achieve the efficient level of employment and output. Incorporating working conditions into a monopsony model where higher wages raise firm labour supply, but less...

Foreign-owned firms have consistently been found to pay higher wages than domestic firms to what appear to be equally productive workers in both developed and developing countries alike. Although a number of studies have documented and some attempted to explain this stylized fact, the issue...

We model a competitive labour market where firms choose combinations of workers and hours per worker to produce output. If one assumes that the scale of production has no impact on hours per worker, then the change in the number of workers and hours per worker resulting from a minimum wage are...

This paper examines whether financial assistance provided by government induces firms to spend more of their own funds on training expenditures, using plant level data for the Republic of Ireland. We pay particular attention to the potential problems in such an evaluation study, namely...

Efficiency wage theory predicts that the wage per unit of effort will be lower in intensively monitored sectors. This wage differential will increase in effort. Using employer-employee matched data from Ghana we provide evidence supporting this hypothesis.

While there has been a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from foreign to domestic firms this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature. Our results suggest that firms which...