Several countries extend collective bargaining agreements to entire sectors, therefore binding non-subscriber workers and employers. These extensions may address coordination issues but may also distort competition by imposing sector-specific minimum wages and other work conditions that are not...

In 2012, in the midst of a recession, a labour law reform in Portugal allowed firms to reduce the overtime premium paid to their workers by 50% or more. Until then, overtime premiums were set by law at a relatively high level and could not be cut unilaterally. We analyse matched...

In 2012, a new law allowed firms in Portugal to reduce the overtime premium paid by half. Until then, as in other countries, premiums were subject to a minimum level. We analyse matched panel data, including worker-level (base and overtime) hours and pay, to study the effects of the resulting...

Many governments extend the coverage of collective agreements to workers and employ- ers that were not involved in their bargaining. These extensions may address coordination issues but may also distort competition by imposing sector-specific minimum wages and other work conditions that are not...

This paper examines a labor law reform implemented in Portugal in 2009 which restricted the use of fixed-term contracts to reduce labor market segmentation. The reform targeted establishments created by large firms above a specific size threshold, covering about 15% of total employment. Drawing...

In most countries, the unemployed are entitled to unemployment benefits only if they have previously worked a minimum period of time. This institutional feature creates a sharp change at eligibility in the disutility from unemployment and may distort the duration of jobs. In this paper, we...

The increased range and quality of China's exports is a major ongoing development in the international economy with potentially far-reaching effects. In this paper, on top of the direct effects of increased imports from China studied in previous research, we also measure the indirect labour...

Local labour market concentration may influence firms' employment responses to minimum wages. We evaluate this hypothesis using comprehensive 1998-2007 data on China's manufacturing sector and about 1,400 hand-collected county-level minimum wages. We find that, consistently with monopsony views,...

Although activation services such as monitoring, training, or job subsidies have been shown to increase exits from unemployment, there is little comprehensive evidence about the effects of activation during recessions. Here we evaluate a large activation programme introduced in Portugal in 2012,...

How much do developing countries benefit from foreign investment? We contribute to this question by comparing the employment and wage practices of foreign and domestic firms in Brazil, using detailed matched firm-worker panel data. In order to control for unobserved worker differences, we...