We suggest that stabilizing the baseline income can make low-wage workers more tolerant towards high income earners. We present evidence of this attitude in the UK by exploiting the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW), which institutionally sets a baseline pay reducing the risk of...

This paper studies the employment and reallocation effects of minimum wages in Germany in a search-and-matching model with endogenous job search effort and vacancy posting, multiple employment levels, a progressive tax-transfer system, and worker and firm heterogeneity. I find that minimum wages...

Ireland is the only country in Europe with a direct question in its Labour Force Survey to identify minimum wage employees. By combining this with the longitudinal component of the Labour Force Survey, we examine the labour market transitions of minimum wage employees over a period of up to five...

In a union of states with partial mobility of households and firms we analyze the setting of minimum wages against the background of unemployment insurance. We find that unemployment insurance is always efficiently organized by decentral decisions. In contrast, for symmetric states only the...

The international surveys of pupil achievement - PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS - have been widely used to compare socioeconomic gradients in children's cognitive abilities across countries. Socioeconomic status is typically measured drawing on children's reports of family or home characteristics rather...

This paper measures the 2007-13 evolution of employment tax rates in the U.K. and the U.S. The U.S. changes are greater, in the direction of taxing a greater fraction of the value created by employment, and primarily achieved with new implicit tax rates. Even though both countries implemented a...