This paper develops and tests a mechanism by which job security affects the age-composition of employment. This mechanism is based on the relative costs of dismissing young versus older workers resulting from job security provisions that are related to tenure. Using 39 consecutive annual...

This paper studies the economic effects of legal amendments on different types of labor laws. It examines the effects of amendments to labor dispute laws and amendments to job security legislation. It also identifies the effects of legal amendments related to the most contentious regulation of...

Informal employment accounts for more than half of total employment in Latin America and the Caribbean, and an even higher percentage in Africa and South Asia. It is associated with lack of social insurance, low tax collection, and low productivity jobs. Lowering payroll taxes is a potential...

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the...

This paper examines the impact of the recent wave of trade liberalization and economic reform on employment. Four alternative measures of openness and four measures of the real exchange rate are used to measure the impact of trade reforms on manufacturing and economy-wide employment. Across a...

This paper examines the economic effects of employment protection legislation in a sample of developed and developing countries. Implementing a difference-indifferences test lessens the potentially severe endogeneity and omitted variable problems associated with cross-country regressions. This...

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the...