We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.’s zero-hours contract (ZHC) – a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows workers to decline any workload. We find quantitatively mixed welfare effects of ZHCs. On one hand they unlock job...

Offshoring continues to be an important dimension of firms' internationalization choices. However, offshoring also increases contract enforcement costs by inhibiting the coordination and monitoring of performance. Immigrant employees may reduce such costs through their specific knowledge of the...

This paper makes the case that current social contracts are often inadequate, irrelevant, or unjust for informal workers. It outlines three possible future scenarios: the bad old contract, an even worse contract, and a better new contract. Under the bad old contract, informal workers lacked...

As China reformed its economy during the past 44 years, it experienced the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history, with an annual rate of GDP growth averaging nearly 10% from 1978 to 2018. In the past decade, however, the rate of growth has noticeably slowed, falling to just...

We develop a small open economy DSGE model to study the macro welfare effects of flexible labor contracts for an economy in a currency union. The framework exhibits two sectors: a fixed sector and a flex sector. The fixed sector offers contracts that exhibit rigidities in working-hours and wages...

The share of workers who are self-employed rises markedly with age. Given policy concerns about inadequate retirement savings, especially among those with lower education, and the resulting interest in encouraging employment at older ages, it is important to understand the role that...

Internship contracts (ICs) were designed as a stepping stone for educated young workers to develop their professional skills upon graduation. Such contracts incentivise employment creation, as firms benefit from lower wages and tax reductions, but at the same time, firms are expected to develop...

We develop a small open economy DSGE model to study the macro welfare effects of flexible labor contracts for an economy in a currency union. The framework exhibits two sectors: a fixed sector and a flex sector. The fixed sector offers contracts that exhibit rigidities in working-hours and wages...

Labor protection increases employees' stability and strengthens their monitoring role, improving firms' information environment and increasing analysts' earnings forecast accuracy. Using the implementation of China's Labor Contract Law as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that labor protection...

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.’s zero-hours contract (ZHC) – a contract that exemptsemployers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows workersto decline any workload. We find quantitatively mixed welfare effects of ZHCs. On one handthey unlock job...

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.’s zero-hours contract (ZHC) – a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows workers to decline any workload. We find quantitatively mixed welfare effects of ZHCs. On one hand they unlock job...

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered renewed interest in the use of different fiscal spending and transfer programmes to address the worsening conditions and deepening inequalities within the labour markets. This paper reviews the role of specific fiscal spending and transfer programmes in shaping...

Die empirische Arbeitsmarktforschung ist derzeit nur eingeschränkt in der Lage, die Qualität der Ausgleichprozesse am Arbeitsmarkt anhand der Merkmale der neu zustande gekommenen Beschäftigungsverhältnisse zu beschreiben. Die Analyse von Stellenanzeigen kann zwar detaillierte Einblicke über...

Temporary employment contracts are often regarded as 'stepping stones' for workers' careers, because they can help inexperienced workers secure a permanent contract. Our study evaluates whether this stepping-stone function is moderated by the contract duration, exploiting a Dutch policy reform...

The share of contract workers, i.e., the workers employed through contractors, as against the workers directly employed by factories, out of all workers employed in India’s organized manufacturing has increased significantly over the last three decades, from 14 per cent in 1989-90 to 38 per...

This paper modifies and extends the aggregate equilibrium models for matching markets developed earlier in the literature. Agents in the matching market search for a match among potential partners, including agreements about a flexible contract, such as hours and wage combinations in the labor...

We develop a theoretically grounded extension of the two-way fixed effects model of Abowd et al. (1999) that allows firms to differ both in the wages they offer new hires and the wages required to poach their employees. Expected hiring wages are modeled as the sum of a worker fixed effect, a...

A growing literature has found a link between performance-related pay (PRP) and poor health, but the causal direction of the relationship is not known. To address this gap, the current paper utilises a crossover experimental design to randomly allocate subjects into a work task paid either by...

I examine whether reference points can provide an explanation for rigid wages in recessions. Even though a recession provides a good reason to adjust wages downward, workers' perception of a "fair wage" may depend on their previous wage, their reference point. Using a laboratory experiment, I...

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.'s zero-hours contract (ZHC) - a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows employees to decline any workload. We find quantitatively that ZHCs improve welfare by enabling firms with more volatile...

In Spain, as in several other European countries, sectoral bargaining agreements are automatically extended to cover all firms in an industry. Employers and employees can also negotiate firm-specific contracts. We use a large matched employer-employee data set to study the effects of firm-level...

This paper derives optimal employment contracts when workers are risk averse and there are employment and unemployment risks. Without income insurance, consumption rises during employment and falls during unemployment. Optimal employment contracts offer severance compensation and sometimes give...

We introduce financial constraints in a theoretical analysis of illegal immigration. Intermediaries finance the migration costs of wealth-constrained migrants, who enter temporary servitude contracts to pay back the debt. These debt/labor contracts are more easily enforceable in the illegal than...

The impact of transparency on the extent of reciprocal behavior is investigated in a simple repeated gift exchange experiment, where principals set wages and agents respond by choosing effort levels. In addition to the efforts the principals' payoffs are determined by a random component. It is...

A sample of 11885 wage agreements, reached in the Canadian unionized sector during 1976-2000, a period of high as well as exceptionally low inflation and substantial fluctuations in nominal and real uncertainty, is used to study the determinants of key provisions of contracts such as their...

Basing our empirical work on the British New Earnings Survey Panel Data between 1990 and 1996, we show that overtime hours of male workers contain significant individual effects. We also show that using suitable techniques to deal with the lagged overtime variable serves to alter radically the...

In an economy with imperfect labor contracts, differences in the distribution of talent can be an independent source of comparative advantage. I study a world economy with two activities, one in which an individual's contribution to production can be measured accurately and another in which...

Workers will not pay for general on-the-job training if contracts are not enforceable. Firms may if there are mobility frictions. Private information about worker productivities, however, prevents workers who quit receiving their marginal products elsewhere. Their new employers then receive...

This study documents a strong inverse relationship between number of pages of labor contracts in effect and the productivity observed in a sample of ten unionized plants. It is argued that this relationship reflects the productivity-inhibiting effects of increases in the number and complexity of...

This study investigates where and when last-in-first-out permanent layoff policies seem to go hand in hand with compensation policies under which the net value of senior workers appears to be less than that of their junior peers. The investigation relies upon both the approximately 260 usable...

This paper analyzes a sorting model of labor contracts when workers have private information about their own productivities, and firms can test (monitor) workers. We show that sorting considerations alone generate steep wage-tenure profiles, high turnover rates of newly hired workers, and...

The non-tradability of human capital is often cited for the failure of traditional asset pricing theory to explain agents' portfolio holdings. In this paper we argue that the opposite might be true --- traditional models might not be able to explain agent portfolio holdings because they do not...

We analyze the contractual relation between workers and their employers when there is nominal risk. The key feature of the problem is that the consumption deflator is random and observed sometime after the effort is exerted. The worker's effort is not observable, and to induce the agent to work,...

In an economy with imperfect labor contracts, differences in the distribution of human capital are an independent source of comparative advantage. I study a world economy with two sectors, one where output is produced by teams and another where individuals can work alone. When workers' abilities...

Labor income indices are created for groupings of individuals, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. People are grouped by a clustering algorithm based on an estimated transition matrix between jobs, by education level, and by skill category. The groupings are defined so that...

This paper studies the efficient agreements about the dependence of workers' earnings on employment, when the employment level is controlled by firms. The firms ' superior information about profitability conditions is responsible for this form of contract governance. Under plausible assumptions,...