Labour Market Institutions and Macroeconomic Shocks* Macroeconomic shocks and labour-market institutions jointly determine employment growth and economic performance. The effect of shocks depends on the nature of these institutions, and the effect of institutional change depends on the macroeconomic environment. It follows that a given set of institutions may be appropriate in one epoch and not...

A popular perception of the US economy is that small businesses create most of the private sector jobs. However, recent work showed that firm age is a more important determinant of job creation than firm size (Haltiwanger, Jarmin, & Miranda, 2013). The authors show that young firms and start-ups contribute more to job creation in the US economy than do small firms. However, young firms and star...

We analyze the economic factors which have contributed to the dramatic decline of the employment share of unskilled labor in German manufacturing, in particular the role played by the relatively rigid earnings structure. Potential effects of intensified international competition and skill–biased technological change on the relative employment and earnings position of unskilled workers are also ...

In many European countries and elsewhere, governments rely on employment subsidies and cuts in employers’ social security contributions to improve the employment prospects of the long-term unemployed and other vulnerable groups in the labour market. Policy makers often justify this strategy by referring to theoretical analyses and simulations which suggest that such measures have strong positiv...

Employees Who Become Self-Employed: Do Labour Income and Wages Have an Impact? This paper analyzes the self-employment decision among Swedish-born male employees. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the impact of the relation between the actual and the predicted income on the probability to become self-employed. The predicted income is calculated from a standard income regression ...

ABSTRACT The analysis of the links between trade policy and labor market outcomes has developed in recent decades, prompt up by the concerns about the effects of the increasing globalization process in which trade plays a major role. In this work we analyze the impact of the increase in trade liberalization, as a consequence of Mercosur's creation on employment, income and wage dispersion at th...

We combine the subjective well-being and the public finance literature analyzing the effect of paying taxes on individual happiness. Using a long panel of very rich German household data we show that conditional on net income paying taxes is associated with higher levels of happiness. Increasing taxes by 1 standard deviation yields an increase in happiness by 2.7 standard deviations. In accorda...

Do the Unemployed Become Successful Entrepreneurs? A Comparison between the Unemployed, Inactive and Wage-Earners In many countries unemployed people are helped to become self-employed. Selfemployment, however, does not necessarily lead to success. Many leave self-employment after a short period and the economic outcome varies greatly. It is important to learn more about the economic outcome fo...

This study compares the effects of minimum wage laws on employment and earnings among low-skilled immigrants and natives in the U.S. Conventional economic theory predicts that higher minimum wages lead to higher earnings among the employed but lower employment rates. Minimum wage increases might have larger effects among low-skilled immigrants than among natives because, on average, immigrants ...

In the most general case of three electrons in three symmetry unrelated centers with Ŝ1 = Ŝ2 = Ŝ3 = 1/2 localized magnetic moments, the low energy spectrum consists of one quartet (Q) and two doublet (D1, D2) pure spin states. The energy splitting between these spin states can be described with the well-known Heisenberg-Dirac-Van Vleck (HDVV) model spin Hamiltonian, and their corresponding ener...