We examine the impact of maternity leaves on the period mothers are away from work postbirth and the likelihood they return to their prebirth employer. We use the introduction and expansion of statutory job-protected maternity leave entitlements in Canada to identify these effects. We find that...

Using U.S. panel data on adult males, the author compares the 'profile heterogeneity model' of earnings dynamics, in which the earnings-experience profile varies across individuals, to a competing model in which earnings 'has a unit root.' The latter specification enjoys increasing popularity...

We examine the (sequential) introduction of early retirement provisions to Canada's two public pension plans. These reforms provide a unique opportunity to assess the effect of public pension plan parameters on labor supply behavior, free of the biases that potentially affect the simple...

In this article, the authors examine the economic assimilation of immigrants to Canada. They provide new evidence on immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and document an increase in the dispersion of labor market outcomes across immigrants of different vintages over time. The authors' results...

The authors examine the effects of minimum wage legislation in Canada over the period 1975-93. For teenagers we find that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is associated with roughly a 2.5 percent decrease in employment. They also find that this result is driven by low frequency...

Using an extraordinary database drawn from longitudinal income tax records, we decompose Canada's growth in earnings inequality into its persistent and transitory components. We find that the growth in earnings inequality reflects both an increase in long-run inequality and an increase in...

The author provides new evidence on the incidence of payroll taxation by examining the experience of Chile before and after the privatization of its Social Security system. This policy change led to a sharp exogenous reduction in the payroll tax burden on Chilean firms; on average, payroll tax...

I assess the long-run implications for children of growing up in a unilateral divorce environment, which increases the ease of divorce by not requiring the explicit consent of both partners. Using 40 years of census data to exploit the variation across states and over time in changes in divorce...

Previous research on unemployment insurance (UI) has emphasized the program's effect on individual search behavior. This state-contingent income may also reduce the labor supply of family members during the unemployment spell. We investigate this question within the context of wives' labor...