Informality, measured as the share of the employed who do not have access to social security, is high in Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic. This paper uses new data from the 2010 Lebanon and Syria matched employer-employee surveys, which include modules that directly test for ability (Raven's...

Laws on hiring and firing are intended to protect workers from unfair behavior by employers, to counter imperfections in financial markets that limit workers’ ability to insure themselves against job loss, and to preserve firm-specific human capital. But by imposing costs on firms’...

In this paper, we present evidence on how employers in developing and emerging economies perceive employment regulations and react to them. We use harmonized surveys of about 10,800 firms around the world, supplemented by indicators of the stringency of employment protection that summarize...

Analysing the British Labour Force Survey, we highlight that dependent self-employed workers constitute a group distinct from both employees and independent self-employed workers in the labour market group. Dependent self-employed workers show characteristics of a more volatile labour market...

The relationship between the dynamics of employment on the one side and hirings and separations on the other side is crucial for the dynamics of unemployment and the labour market response to recessions. Although the average level of hiring and separation is much lower in Germany than in the US,...