This paper investigates the social preferences over labor market exibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand. We demonstrate that how the economy responds to productivity shocks depends on the power of labor to extract rents and on the status quo level of the firing cost....

We propose a simple test that uses information on workers’ mobility, wages and firms’ profits to identify the sign and strength of assortative matching. The basic intuition underlying our empirical strategy is that, in the presence of positive (negative) assortative matching, good workers...

This paper examines the structures behind competitive transformation in telecommunications. The analysis is based on qualitative evidence from Telefonica’s transformation since the mid-1980s and comparisons with BT, Orange, and Deutsche Telekom. Telecommunications is a critical industry...

In this paper I provide estimates of the impact of immigration on native wage and employment levels (rather than on wage inequality which has been the focus of the literature). I use variation within 2-digit industries across regions using Austrian panel data from 1986 to 2004 for...

We use a unique data set providing administrative information on earnings by skill-level (blue collars, white collars), on the local stock of human capital and on several firm’s characteristics, including balance sheet data, to investigate the size of localized human capital externalities in...

We investigate how nondemocratic regimes use the military and how this can lead to the emergence of military dictatorships. Nondemocratic regimes need the use of force in order to remain in power, but this creates a political moral hazard problem; a strong military may not simply work as an...

Inefficiencies in the bureaucratic organization of the state are often viewed as important factors in retarding economic development. Why certain societies choose or end up with such inefficient organizations has received very little attention, however. In this paper, we present a simple theory...

This paper investigates the role that idiosyncratic uncertainty plays in shaping social preferences over the degree of labor market flexibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand where the productivity of firms evolves over time as a Geometric Brownian motion. A key result...

Administrative data from INPS (Italian Institute for Social Security) on Italian high tenure workers job-histories (15 years, from 1985 to 1999) is used to quantify the temporal pattern of the effect of displacement on workers’ earnings, employment and wages. Moreover, I distinguish different...

This paper develops a model to analyze economic performance under different political regimes. An oligarchic society, where political power is in the hands of major producers, protects their property rights, but also tends to erect significant entry barriers against new entrepreneurs. Democracy,...