How much employment can be generated by decreasing payroll taxes? We examine this question by exploring the staggered rollout of a large payroll tax reform in Brazil. Using administrative matched employer-employee data, we find an increase of 5 percent on employment due to both firm growth and...

This paper studies the role of labor courts in determining labor market outcomes in the Brazilian economy. First, by exploring the fact that judges are assigned randomly to cases and using the universe of labor lawsuits filed in the country's largest labor courthouse from 2008 to 2013, we show...