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Institution

Institute for the Study of Labor

NonprofitBonn, Germany
About: Institute for the Study of Labor is a nonprofit organization based out in Bonn, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Wage & Unemployment. The organization has 2039 authors who have published 13475 publications receiving 439376 citations.
Topics: Wage, Unemployment, Earnings, Population, Productivity


Papers
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Posted Content
TL;DR: The authors assess new studies claiming that the standard panel data approach used in much of the "new minimum wage research" is flawed because it fails to account for spatial heterogeneity and conclude that minimum wages in the United States have not reduced employment.
Abstract: We revisit the minimum wage-employment debate, which is as old as the Department of Labor. In particular, we assess new studies claiming that the standard panel data approach used in much of the "new minimum wage research" is flawed because it fails to account for spatial heterogeneity. These new studies use research designs intended to control for this heterogeneity and conclude that minimum wages in the United States have not reduced employment. We explore the ability of these research designs to isolate reliable identifying information and test the untested assumptions in this new research about the construction of better control groups. Our evidence points to serious problems with these research designs. We conclude that the evidence still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others, and that policymakers need to bear this tradeoff in mind when making decisions about increasing the minimum wage.

390 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The negative relationship between legalization and alcohol-related traffic fatalities does not necessarily imply that driving under the influence of marijuana is safer than driving underThe influence of alcohol.
Abstract: To date, 19 states have passed medical marijuana laws, yet very little is known about their effects. The current study examines the relationship between the legalization of medical marijuana and traffic fatalities, the leading cause of death among Americans ages 5–34. The first full year after coming into effect, legalization is associated with an 8–11 percent decrease in traffic fatalities. The impact of legalization on traffic fatalities involving alcohol is larger and estimated with more precision than its impact on traffic fatalities that do not involve alcohol. Legalization is also associated with sharp decreases in the price of marijuana and alcohol consumption, which suggests that marijuana and alcohol are substitutes. Because alternative mechanisms cannot be ruled out, the negative relationship between legalization and alcohol-related traffic fatalities does not necessarily imply that driving under the influence of marijuana is safer than driving under the influence of alcohol.

388 citations

ReportDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the labor supply effects of social insurance programs and find that the programs tend to increase the length of time employees spend out of work, while the authors argue that individuals may be imperfectly informed as to the rules of the programs and that key parameters are likely to differ for those who are eligible for social insurance, such as the disabled.
Abstract: This chapter examines the labor supply effects of social insurance programs. We argue that this topic deserves separate treatment from the rest of the labor supply literature because individuals may be imperfectly informed as to the rules of the programs and because key parameters are likely to differ for those who are eligible for social insurance programs, such as the disabled. Furthermore, differences in social insurance programs often provide natural experiments with exogenous changes in wages or incomes that can be used to estimate labor supply responses. Finally, social insurance often affects different margins of labor supply. For example, the labor supply literature deals mostly with adjustments in the number of hours worked, whereas the incentives of social insurance programs frequently affect the decision of whether to work at all. The empirical work on unemployment insurance (UI) and workers' compensation (WC) insurance finds that the programs tend to increase the length of time employees spend out of work. Most of the estimates of the elasticities of lost work time that incorporate both the incidence and duration of claims are close to 1.0 for unemployment insurance and between 0.5 and 1.0 for workers' compensation. These elasticities are substantially larger than the labor supply elasticities typically found for men in studies of the effects of wages or taxes on hours of work. The evidence on disability insurance and (especially) social security retirement suggests much smaller and less conclusively established labor supply effects. Part of the explanation for this difference probably lies in the fact that UI and WC lead to short-run variation in wages with mostly a substitution effect. Our review suggest that it would be misleading to apply a universal set of labor supply elasticities to these diverse problems and populations.

386 citations

Posted ContentDOI
TL;DR: This paper examined the impact of employment protection legislation on productivity in the OECD, using annual cross-country aggregate data on the degree of regulations and industry-level data on productivity from 1982 to 2003.
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of employment protection legislation on productivity in the OECD, using annual cross-country aggregate data on the degree of regulations and industry-level data on productivity from 1982 to 2003. We adopt a "difference-in-differences" framework, which exploits likely differences in the productivity effect of dismissal regulations in different industries. Our identifying assumption is that stricter employment protection influences worker or firm behaviour, and thereby productivity, more in industries where the policy is likely to be binding than in other industries. The advantage of this approach is that, in contrast with standard cross-country analysis, we can control for unobserved factors that, on average, are likely to have the same effect on productivity in all industries. Our empirical results suggest that mandatory dismissal regulations have a depressing impact on productivity growth in industries where layoff restrictions are more likely to be binding. We present a large battery of robustness checks, including dealing with endogeneity issues, that suggest that our finding is robust.

383 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a micro-econometric investigation into the relation between subjective life satisfaction and income distribution, using a balanced panel survey of the Russian population (RLMS), running from 1994 to 2000, including 4096 individuals.
Abstract: We propose a micro-econometric investigation into the relation between subjective life satisfaction and income distribution, using a balanced panel survey of the Russian population (RLMS), running from 1994 to 2000, including 4096 individuals. We show that in the context of the Russian very volatile environment, Hirschman's (1973) "tunnel effect" conjecture seems to be validated: Variables reflecting income distribution do not influence satisfaction through social comparisons; individuals rather seem to use their informational content in order to form their expectations. The reference group's income exerts a positive influence on individual satisfaction, which contrasts with other studies on the subject. Inequality indices do not affect individual welfare.

381 citations


Authors

Showing all 2136 results

NameH-indexPapersCitations
Michael Marmot1931147170338
James J. Heckman175766156816
Anders Björklund16576984268
Jean Tirole134439103279
Ernst Fehr131486108454
Matthew Jones125116196909
Alan B. Krueger11740275442
Eric A. Hanushek10944959705
David Card10743355797
M. Hashem Pesaran10236188826
Richard B. Freeman10086046932
Richard Blundell9348761730
John Haltiwanger9139338803
John A. List9158336962
Joshua D. Angrist8930459505
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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Institution in previous years
YearPapers
202332
202283
2021146
2020259
2019191
2018229