Do employers seek to attract individuals with more education because it enhances human capital or because it signals higher levels of pre-existing traits? We experimentally vary master's degree completion rates on applicant résumés and examine how this influences candidates' desirability and...

Heat's impact on economic growth and aggregate productivity is well-established, but while individual impairments are well-understood as mechanisms, the role of interpersonal dynamics remain unexplored despite the growing prevalence of team-based occupations. In our experiment, programmers were...

Does adoption of broadband internet in firms enhance labor productivity and increase wages? And is this technological change skill biased or factor neutral? We exploit rich Norwegian data with firm-level information on value added, factor inputs and broadband adoption to answer these questions....

This paper studies the effects of nursing home unionization on numerous labor, establishment, and consumer outcomes using a regression discontinuity design. We find negative effects of unionization on staffing levels and no decline in care quality, suggesting positive labor productivity effects....

Agricultural and other physically demanding sectors are important sources of growth in developing countries but prevalent diseases such as malaria adversely impact the productivity, labor supply, and occupational choice of workers in these sectors by reducing physical capacity. This study...

This paper studies the relationship between teacher unionization and student achievement. Generally stable patterns of teacher unionization since the 1970s have historically presented challenges in measuring the effects of unionization on educational production. However, the blossoming of the...

Switzerland has experienced a substantial influx of immigrants over the last 50 years after World War II, which has led Switzerland to have among the highest share of foreigners in population among all OECD countries. This paper analyses the migration experience of Switzerland. The analysis...

While Spain had traditionally under-performed its European counterparts in terms of labor productivity, the trend is reversed after 2007. The evolution of aggregate productivity in Spain during the Great Recession largely responds to the adverse conditions in the labor market, but not only....

We examine day-to-day fluctuations in worker-level output over 15 months for a panel of 98 manufacturing workers at a plant located in an industrial city in Hebei province, north China. Long-term workers earn piece-rate wages, with no base pay or minimum pay, for homogeneous tasks performed over...

We show that wage setting in the Colombian manufacturing industry is not fundamentally driven by labor productivity in contrast to the standard theoretical prediction. On the contrary, internal institutional arrangements – payroll taxation, the minimum wage or the price wedge between...