Leveraging a major Italian reform enacted in June 2012 that eroded employment protection to workers on permanent contracts, we use detailed administrative data to estimate how this reduction affected the cost of job loss. We employ a stacked-by-event research design, which compares workers...

Leveraging a major Italian reform enacted in June 2012 that eroded employment protection to workers on permanent contracts, we use detailed administrative data to estimate how this reduction affected the cost of job loss. We employ a stacked-by-event research design, which compares workers...

We present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourly wages. Work effort neither reacts to an increase of the own wage, nor to a positive or negative peer comparison. This result seems at odds with numerous laboratory...

We present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourly wages. Work effort neither reacts to an increase of the own wage, nor to a positive or negative peer comparison. This result seems at odds with numerous laboratory...

US earnings inequality has increased dramatically since the 1970s, and the prospect of a reversal depends on what caused the trend. The standard explanation emphasizes skill-biased technical change. This paper briefly considers some aggregation issues and then proceeds to outline two alternative...

Offering higher wages may enable firms to attract more applicants and screen them more carefully. If firms compete in this way in the labor market, "selection wages" emerge. This note illustrates this wage-setting mechanism. Selection wages may engender unconventional results, such as a pre-tax...

In a city where individuals endogenously choose their residential location, firms determine their spatial efficiency wage and a geographical red line beyond which they do not recruit workers. This is because workers experiencing longer commuting trips provide lower effort levels than those...

Standard economic wisdom generally stresses the benefits of increased competition on the product market. This paper proposes a model of monopolistic competition with an endogenous determination of workers flows in and out of unemployment, where wages are determined according to an efficiency...

We examine the effects of two different types of commodity taxation, specific and ad valorem, on wages and profits. We analyze two models of wage determination, one with efficiency wage setting and one with bargaining between a union and a firm. In the former, a (locally) revenue-neutral shift...

The efficiency wage hypothesis is tested by using one of the recently developed methods to measure technical efficiency. We use panel data on 40 Turkish cement plants for the period 1980-1995. The predictions of the efficiency wage hypothesis are tested in two ways: estimation of wage augmented...