As the U.S. population ages, the growing retiree-worker ratio increases the burden of public retirement systems. Is it efficient to maintain a defined-benefit social security system? Should PAYGO benefits be reduced and private retirement savings be encouraged? The paper examines these questions in a neoclassical growth model with overlapping generations and demographic uncertainty. In case of ...

Recent accounts of transnational activism have examined a variety of social movement organizations (SMOs) but have paid little attention to labor transnationalism. This article utilizes and adapts this new transnational social movements scholarship to understand contemporary labor activism in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries. Exploring the preexisting networks and intra...

and participants at a World Bank seminar, for useful comments. The views expressed here are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Bank or its affiliated organizations. iii ABSTRACT Labor market integration is typically assumed to raise welfare in the absence of distortions because it allows labor to move to where returns are highest. This result is examined in a simple general ...

This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household’s discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased current consumption by borrowing against future wages. Collateral constraints generate a positive comovem...

This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household's discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased current consumption by borrowing against future wages. Collateral constraints generate a positive comovem...

This article evaluates social movement perspectives on repression and movement-countermovement organization relative to the wave of policy setbacks that unions experienced in the pivotal two decades following the New Deal. An event history analysis of the adoption of right-to-work laws across states between 1944 and 1960 supports social movement perspectives that emphasize the relative threat p...

The paper presents a model that allows a unified analysis of sickness absence and search unemployment. Sickness appears as random shocks to individual utility functions, interacts with individual search and labor supply decisions and triggers movements across labor force states. The employed worker prefers absence for sufficiently severe sickness and the unemployed worker may prefer nonparticip...

This chapter assesses how models with search frictions have shaped our understanding of aggregate labor market outcomes in two contexts: business cycle fluctuations and long-run (trend) changes. We first consolidate data on aggregate labor market outcomes for a large set of OECD countries. We then ask how models with search improve our understanding of these data. Our results are mixed. Search ...

This article examines the relationship between the state and informal workers’ transnational labor movements. Using the case of the Self-Employed Women’s Association, I illustrate how Indian informal workers are launching an alternative labor movement that addresses their unique conditions by simultaneously privileging the central role of the nation state and leveraging the power of the transna...

This paper characterizes the labor supply and borrowing of a household facing collateral requirements that limit its debt and compel it to accumulate equity in its durable goods stock. The household's discount rate exceeds the market rate of interest, so it would otherwise finance increased current consumption by borrowing against future wages. Collateral constraints generate a positive comovem...