This paper investigates how human capital concentration in cities is associated with working hours across different worker groups, an important but understudied dimension of urban agglomeration effects. Using microdata from the American Community Survey covering 240 metropolitan statistical...

This study analyses the relationship between unemployment and economic growth at the international level, addressing the nature and decomposition of the Okun coefficient. Using World Bank data from 173 countries between 1991 and 2019, econometric techniques including decompositions and spatial...

I study how transitory increases in the opportunity cost of schooling affect dropout rates and long-run outcomes. Exploiting a tax-free year in Iceland and comparing teenagers around compulsory schooling age, I document increased dropout rates and a permanent loss in educational attainment for...

How do firms adjust their labor demand when a female employee takes temporary leave after childbirth? Using Austrian administrative data, we compare firms with and without a birth event and exploit policy reforms that significantly altered leave durations. We find that (i) firms adjust hiring,...

As technological advances accelerate and labour demands shift, the ability of workers to reallocate across occupations will be crucial for shaping labour market dynamics, inequality, and effective policy design. In this paper, we develop a tractable equilibrium model of the labour market that...

The new German federal government coalition is planning a significant tax break for workers of retirement age: the active pension (Aktivrente). With the active pension, workers who have reached the statutory retirement age may earn up to 2,000 euros a month tax-free, a move that the government...

We study how public pensions impact lifecycle labor supply decisions. Our analysis centers on pension eligibility rules in Ecuador. We first use administrative data to document and unpack retirement spikes at eligibility ages. Next, we use survey data and regression discontinuity to investigate...

How does basic income (a regular, unconditional, guaranteed cash transfer) impact labor supply? We show that in search models of the labor market with income effects, this impact is theoretically ambiguous: Employment and job durations might increase or decrease, match surplus might be shifted...

This paper models fair workweek regulations that require employers to provide employees with (1) schedule predictability via advance notice of their work schedule and premium payments for short-notice changes, and (2) access to hours meaning they must offer open hours to existing employees...

This article explores how an employee's choice to work from home (WFH) influences his or her spouse's outcomes. Drawing on the specific features of the French institutions, we show that a spouse's switch to WFH leads to a sharp increase in the probability that his or her partner will also switch...

Unpaid domestic work continues to fall largely on women, despite their growing presence in the workforce. This paper asks whether policies changing the relative bargaining position of spouses can disrupt this pattern. I use the introduction of a bachelor tax in fascist Italy to show that...

While the Draghi report primarily focuses on increasing labour productivity, it also makes a compelling case for mitigating the decline in the workforce by using the untapped potential of labour force participation and employment. Forward-looking analyses of the EU labour force require taking...

We examine the relationship between economic development and female labor force participation, with a focus on the impact of gender norms. Analyzing quasi-random variation in provincial exports in reunified Vietnam from 2002 to 2018, we find that a positive economic shock led to a significant...

We show that the widespread approach to estimate the career costs of motherhood - so- called "child penalties" - is prone to produce biased results, as it pools first-time mothers of all ages without accounting for their differences in characteristics and outcomes. We propose a novel method...

This paper evaluates the redistributive and labour supply effects of transitioning from a joint to a fully individualised income tax system in Ireland. The current Irish tax system, which remains partially joint since the early 2000's, provides a financial advantage to married couples by...

Are the effects of tax aversion on labor supply symmetric? In a real-effort online experiment, participants are exposed to manipulated wages and taxes after first experiencing the same reference wage. We find no significant differences in their productivity; however, we find significant...

Electrification typically promotes economic development and enhances household wellbeing. However, how electrification affects the economic activities of different demographic groups is not yet sufficiently understood. Focusing only on aggregate household-level outcomes may overlook unequal...

Raising the retirement age is a common policy response when social security schemes face fiscal pressures. We develop and estimate a dynamic life cycle model to study optimal retirement and tax policy when individuals face health shocks and income risk and make endogenous retirement decisions....

We study optimal housing taxation in a Mirrleesian framework where individuals differ in both labor productivity and land ownership. Housing services are produced by combining scarce land with structures that require maintenance, which can be performed either in-house or through market...

What is the effect of immigration on native labor-market outcomes? An extensive literature identifies the differential impact of immigration on natives employed in jobs that are more exposed to immigrant labor (supply exposure). But immigrants consume in addition to producing output. Despite...

In December 2024, Spain's government reached an agreement with the country's major trade unions to reduce the standard workweek to 37.5 hours without wage cuts by the end of 2025. This paper provides an ex-ante assessment of the proposed reform using EUROLAB, a discrete choice labour supply...

This study uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to analyze the impact of skilled and semi-skilled labor supply shocks on the Ethiopian economy and sectoral outputs. The study examines three policy scenarios: a 10% increase, a 15% increase, and a 20% increase in skilled and...

Women's educational attainment has continuously increased across the Middle East, while fertility rates have declined substantially. Yet their labor force participation remains stubbornly low. To investigate this puzzle, I use a discrete choice experiment in Egypt that varies the gender...

How does basic income (a regular, unconditional, guaranteed cash transfer) impact labor supply? We show that in search models of the labor market with income effects, this impact is theoretically ambiguous: Employment and job durations might increase or decrease, match surplus might be shifted...