The Canadian federal tax reform of 1988 replaced a spousal tax exemption with a non-refundable tax credit. This reduced the “jointness” of the tax system: after the reform, secondary earners’ effective “first dollar” marginal tax rates no longer depended on the marginal tax rates of their spouses. In practice, the effective “first dollar” marginal tax rates faced by women with high income husba...

Using panel data from a large hospital system, this paper presents estimates of the productivity effects of human capital in a team production environment. Proxying nurses’ general human capital by education and their unit-specific human capital by experience on the nursing unit, we find that greater amounts of both types of human capital significantly improve patient outcomes. Disruptions to t...

This paper studies human capital formation, labor supply and retirement decisions associated with four alternative regimes of social security. We implement a theoretical model with overlapping generations of households and two different ability types within each generation. We find that with a given social security contribution rate, it is better to transfer income to the elderly as old-age ben...

Short-Run and Long-Term Effects of Childbirth on Mothers’ Employment and Working Hours Across Institutional Regimes: An Empirical Analysis Based on the European Community Household Panel The employment behavior of mothers is strongly influenced by labor market regulations and certain institutional arrangements, which both vary greatly across European countries. Using the European Community Hous...

This paper estimates the effect of having children on labor force participation of mothers in urban Iranian areas. I exploit sex composition of children as an exogenous source of variation in family size to account for endogeneity of fertility. Using information from the Iranian Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) over three samples, namely, households with one and more, two and more...

In this paper, we analyze family labor supply in urban China using discretized neo-classical labor supply model, where we take into account the unobserved heterogeneity of each spouse and their correlation, unobservability and measurement errors of the wage rates, and the correlation of the wage and preferences. The correlation of preference between spouses is also taken into account. Elasticit...

This paper explores the rationale for unemployment beneÞts as a complement to optimal non-linear income taxation. High-skilled workers and low-skilled workers face different exogenous risks of being unemployed. As long as the low-skilled workers face a higher unemployment risk, we Þnd that there is a case for over-insuring the lowskilled, hence the unemployment beneÞts of the low-skilled should...

We specify a model of labour supply with job offer restrictions. A job offer is defined by a wage rate and working hours. The number of job offers is restricted, and follows a Poisson distribution. Individuals choose the alternative with the highest utility level. Three specifications are estimated: a basic specification, a specification in which the number of job offers depends on characterist...

Does union membership increase sickness absence from work and, if so, by how much? And which specific channels does this effect operate through? Using UK Labour Force Survey data for 2006-2008 we find that trade union membership is associated with a substantial increase in the probability of reporting sick and in the amount of average absence taken. This result can be largely attributed to the ...

Online professional networking platforms are widely used and may help workers to search for obtain jobs. We run the first randomized evaluation of training work seekers join use one largest platforms, LinkedIn. Training increases end-of-program employment rate by 10 percent (7 percentage points), this effect persists at least 12 months. The available employment, platform use, job data suggest t...