Big data trends, have gained popularity among practitioners for its potential applications on accurate econometric prediction. This paper presents an application where unemployment job search indicators for the G7 countries are based on Google trends data. For each country, a set of google...

Macedonia receives at least 4% of GDP as cash remittances per year while a third of the population faces poverty. The study has two objectives: first, to investigate if and to what extent remittances improve individual social indicators; and ii) to devise and ex-ante simulate the effects of...

The past two decades were characterized by high and persistent youth unemployment rates in Macedonia; this is despite the many active workfare policies addressed to the youth population. Thus, this paper contributes to the literature by investigating the impact that a longer unemployment spell...

Workers effective access to mandatory non-wage benefits is key to achieving decent working conditions in the Ghanaian labor market. Thus, this paper investigates the effects of union presence on workers' reported access to non-wage benefits. The study draws its data from the 2012/ 2013 Ghana...

Economic theory suggests that minimum wages may lead to unemployment; nevertheless, empirical evidence in developed economies stays ambiguous. Evidence from developing countries is even more heterogenous due to the low law enforcement and weaker labor market institutions. Thus, our aim is to...

The vulnerability of working youth in Western Balkan countries is a major policy concern because their unemployment rates lie far above the EU average. We investigated the effect of youth underemployment on wages in three countries in the Western Balkans: Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Our...

Recent empirical evidence, largely based on descriptive analyses, suggests that women's wages and employment are more likely to be affected by government austerity measures because women constitute a majority of the public-sector labor force. Employing panel data from the 2014 and 2015 Labour...

We document and compare the extent and evolution of labour market power by employers on the US and Peruvian labour markets during the 2010s. Making use of a structural estimation model of labour market dynamics, we estimate differences in market power that workers face depending on their sector...