Labor market regulation is a controversial area of public policy in both developed and developing countries. Mainstream economic analysis traditionally portrays legal interventions providing for minimum wages, unemployment insurance and (often only a modicum of) employment protection as...

The job polarization hypothesis suggests a U-shaped pattern of employment growth along the earnings/skill distribution, which is driven by simultaneous growth in the employment of high-skill/high-earnings and low-skill/low-earnings occupations due to Routine-Biased Technological Change (RBTC)...

The UNDP has set Millennium Goals which include the halving of world poverty by 2015. This can be viewed in the light of enlightened self interest, including noneconomic interest, within the above view. This was translated into reducing by half the number of people living in abject poverty. We...

We study the relationship between leisure and happiness, controlling both for individual and national variables. Using international survey data from 33 countries in 2007, our results show that certain leisure activities, satisfaction from leisure, and meaning of leisure to individuals all...

This paper discusses two issues in the relationship between inequality and economic growth: the data and the econometrics. We first review the inequality data set of Deininger and Squire, which, we argue, fails to provide adequate or accurate longitudinal and cross-country coverage. We then...

We investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment laws, collective bargaining laws, and social security laws in 85 countries. We find that richer countries regulate labor less than poorer countries do, although they have more generous social security systems. The political power...

The economic and financial crises of the last decade have led to massive changes in economic, social, banking, and employment policies throughout the world. However, both the United States and the United Kingdom have generally maintained more static in relation to their overall status quo...