This paper investigates how competition for skilled labour from foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) affects the alignment of wages and labour productivity in domestic firms. Using linked employer- employee records, worker data, and firm-level customs declarations from South Africa,...

This paper reviews the process of structural transformation (ST) across a wide range of Asian economies. After outlining key theories of ST, it documents Asia's transformation and compares it with patterns observed elsewhere, using standard indicators and broader dimensions of structural change....

Does artificial intelligence (AI) increase productivity - and does it displace workers? We examine aggregate effects using administrative data covering essentially all U.S. employers in a difference-in-differences design exploiting occupational AI exposure across industries and states. A one...

This paper combines international evidence from worker and firm surveys conducted in 2025 and 2026 to document large gaps in AI adoption, both between the US and Europe and across European countries. Cross-country differences in worker demographics and firm composition account for an important...

This paper combines international evidence from worker and firm surveys conducted in 2025 and 2026 to document large gaps in AI adoption, both between the US and Europe and across European countries. Cross-country differences in worker demographics and firm composition account for an important...

AI-powered mental health apps have attracted growing interest as a low-cost way to expand care. Yet questions remain about their effectiveness, safety, and whether they may crowd out psychotherapy. We evaluate one such app in a randomized controlled trial among 1,964 Mexican women with mild to...

This paper utilizes panel data of Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2022 and measures regional digital infrastructure by the number of internet broadband access ports per capita. It systematically examines the moderating role of digital infrastructure in the relationship...

Wage dispersion and job-to-job mobility are central features of modern labour markets, yet canonical equilibrium search models with exogenous job-offer ladders struggle to jointly account for these facts and the magnitude of frictional wage inequality. We develop a continuous-time equilibrium...

This paper studies the relative importance of teacher-student match effects and general teacher effectiveness in producing student learning, and quantifies gains from alternative teacher assignments. We estimate a framework that separates these components, allowing match quality to vary with...

This paper develops a micro-founded framework linking price-cost and wage markups to intangible assets. Intangible assets, once created, are a source of firm rents. Owing to limits to enforceable ownership and the non-rival nature of knowledge, these rents can be both retained by the origin firm...

We present the first representative international data on firm-level AI use. We survey almost 6,000 CFOs, CEOs, and executives from stratified firm samples across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. We find four key facts. First, around 70 percent of firms actively use AI, particularly younger,...

We use novel data from a survey of nearly 750 corporate executives to study the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on productivity and the workforce. We document substantial heterogeneity in AI adoption across firms, with more than half having already invested, though many smaller firms are...

What are the returns to firms of paying more? We study a Fortune 500 firm's voluntary firm-wide $15/hour minimum wage, which affected some warehouses more than others. Using a continuous difference-in-differences design, we find that a $1/hour pay increase (5.5 percent) halves worker departures,...

This study examines the effects of the russia's full-scale invasion on the Ukrainian corporate labor market. We use the DID technique to analyze a panel data set of over 100,000 firms linked to geolocation and industry data spanning 2021-2024 and show how war harms the corporate labor market in...

We study the effects of North Macedonia's 2017 minimum wage reform - the largest in the country's history - using matched employer-employee administrative data covering the entire range of firms and employees, and a difference-in-differences design based on firms' pre-reform share of minimum...

This paper examines the existence and extent to which the "Baumol cost disease" could have affected aggregate growth in Europe. This would arise if lower productivity sectors began to account for an increasing share of output which would then put downward pressure on the prospective growth rate...

This paper studies the impact of AI on productivity and inequality by focusing on the introduction of AlphaFold2. This AI algorithm can accurately predict protein structures, which were traditionally characterized by structural biologists through experiments. To capture the impact of AI on...

This paper provides new evidence on how the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) affects productivity and employment in Europe. Using matched EIBIS-ORBIS data on more than 12,000 non-financial firms in the European Union (EU) and United States (US), we instrument the adoption of AI by EU...

Using matched employer-employee data for Germany, we estimate firm production functions augmented with workers' personality traits. We find that emotional stability is the only trait that positively affects firm productivity. Its effect shows up mainly in large firms operating with a higher than...

We examine how rainfall variability affects weekly hours worked among Filipino workers using nationally representative Labor Force Survey (LFS) data merged with regional rainfall records from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA). While...

Flexible work arrangements are increasingly becoming the norm across many countries, particularly in developed nations such as Canada and the United States. Remote work (work-from-home, or WFH, for short) has gained significant popularity in recent years, especially after the outbreak of the...

Relatively flat US productivity growth versus rising R&D expenditures is often interpreted as evidence that ideas are getting harder to find. We build a new 45-year panel tracking the universe of US firms' patenting to investigate the micro underpinnings of this conclusion, separately examining...

Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, in part because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender...

This paper develops a micro-founded framework linking price-cost and wage markups to intangible assets. Intangible assets, once created, are a source of firm rents. Owing to limits to enforceable ownership and the non-rival nature of knowledge, these rents can be both retained by the origin firm...

This paper describes the framework used by the Bank of Finland to assess the cost competitiveness of the Finnish economy. We discuss the conceptual foundations, data choices, and methodological trade-offs involved in constructing commonly used indicators, with particular emphasis on...

This paper investigates the extent to which the historical legacy of apartheid laws explains contemporary misallocation and firm productivity in South Africa. During the apartheid era (1948-1994), job reservations, closed-shop agreements, and minimum-wage policies were implemented to restrict...

This paper develops a micro-founded framework linking price-cost and wage markups to intangible assets. Intangible assets, once created, are a source of firm rents. Owing to limits to enforceable ownership and the non-rival nature of knowledge, these rents can be both retained by the origin firm...

Labour productivity has been on a declining trend in the Caribbean. An examination of this trend revealed a growing concern of skills mismatch in the labour market. At the same time, youth unemployment is high in many countries, with young women and girls twice as likely not to be in education,...