Young People and the Great Recession This article reviews the effects of the Great Recession on youth labour markets. We argue that young people aged 16-24 have suffered disproportionately during the recession. Using the USA and UK as case studies, we analyse youth unemployment using microdata. We argue that there is convincing evidence that the effects of unemployment when young impose costs o...

Opportunities for skilled and unskilled workers in the UK diverged over the last quarter of the twentieth century. We develop an empirical framework consistent with these trends that highlights the importance of skill heterogeneity in both wage setting and labour demand in explaining aggregate labour market outcomes. The framework enables us to quantify the macroeconomic effects of shocks that ...

We investigate with German data how the use of temporary agency work has helped establishments to manage the economic and financial crisis in 2008/09. We examine the (regular) workforce development, use of short-time work, and business performance of establishments that made differential use of temporary agency work prior to the crisis. Overall, our results suggest that establishments with a gr...

We study a search model where workers can send multiple applications to high and low productivity firms. Firms that compete for the same candidate can increase their wage offers as often as they like. We show that there is a unique equilibrium where workers mix between sending both applications to the high and both to the low productivity sector. Efficiency requires however that they apply to b...

Self-employment has risen dramatically in Canada, accounting for a disproportionate share of job growth since the 1980's. Using hitherto-unexploited information on labour force transitions from 16 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances between 1982 and 1998, we show that the changes in transition patterns underlying these increases were very different for women and men. For women, most of the...

Multinational Companies, Backward Linkages and Labour Demand Elasticities This paper investigates the link between nationality of ownership and wage elasticities of labour demand at the level of the plant. In particular, we examine whether labour demand in multinationals becomes less elastic with respect to the wage if the plant has backward linkages with the local economy. Our empirical eviden...

We use data from a résumé audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects facing recent college graduates. We find no statistical evidence of negative duration dependence associated with unemployment spells for recent college graduates. Alternatively, college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30 percent lower than that for ...

Labor Market Impacts of a Large-Scale Public Works Program: Evidence from the Indian Employment Guarantee Scheme Recent years have seen an increasing interest in using public-works programs as antipoverty measures in developing countries. This paper analyzes the rural labor market impacts of the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, one of the most ambitious programs of its kind, b...

Why Are the Returns to Education Higher for Entrepreneurs than for Employees? We compare the returns to education (RTE) for entrepreneurs and employees, based on 19 waves of the NLSY database. By using instrumental variable techniques (IV) and taking account of selectivity, we find that the RTE are significantly higher for entrepreneurs than for employees (18.3 percent and 9.9 percent, respecti...

This paper identifies the effect of financing constraints on firms’ labor demand. We exploit exogenous funding shocks to German savings banks during the US mortgage crisis that are unrelated to local conditions. We find that firms with credit relationships with affected banks experienced a significant decline in employment and in labor compensation relative to firms whose credit relationships w...