Centralized wage-setting institutions compress relative wages. Motivated by this fact, we investigate the effects of centralized wage setting on the industry distribution of em-ployment. We examine Sweden’s industry distribution from 1960 to 1994 and compare it to the U.S. distribution over the same period. We relate U.S.-Swedish differences in the industry distribution and their evolution over...

Educational Self-Selection, Tasks Assignment and Rising Wage Inequality This paper presents a general equilibrium assignment model of workers to tasks with endogenous human capital formation and multidimensionality of skills. The model has 2 key features. First, skills are endogenous and multidimensional. Second, two types of assignment occur, workers self-select their education and firms assig...

Wage Policies of a Russian Firm and the Financial Crisis of 1998: Evidence from Personnel Data – 1997 to 2002 We use a rich personnel data set from a Russian firm for the years 1997 to 2002 to analyze how the financial crisis in 1998 and the resulting change in external labor market conditions affect the wages and the welfare of workers inside a firm. We provide evidence that large shocks to ex...

Wage and Employment Determination in Volatile Times: Sweden 1913-1939 The paper studies wage and employment determination in the Swedish business sector from the mid-1910s to the late 1930s. This period includes the boom and bust cycle of the early 1920s as well as the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The events of the early 1920s are particularly intriguing, involving inflation running at ...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Using panel data for 15 industrial countries, active labor market...

Self-Employment Dynamics Across the Business Cycle: Migrants Versus Natives Economically active people are either in gainful employment, are unemployed or selfemployed. We are interested in the dynamics of the transitions between these states across the business cycle. It is generally perceived that employment or self-employment are absorbing states. However, innovations, structural changes and...

This paper explores one of the key issues in current research on gender and development: the links between poverty and young women’s employment. Specifically, the following questions were addressed, in the context of Kerala: Which young women work for pay and why? To what extent is a woman’s household economic status -especially poverty status -an important determinant of employment, and to wha...

This paper investigates how firms dynamically adjust their use of capital, labor, energy, and materials using the Colombian Census of Manufacturing. This Census contains data at the establishment level and provides evidence of a mix of smooth and lumpy adjustments and of interrelated factor adjustments. Based on this evidence, I propose a dynamic firm model that incorporates five key features: ...

Does the disappointingly high unemployment in Central and East European countries reflect non-completed adjustment to institutional shocks from transition to a market economy, or is it the result of high labour market rigidities, or rather a syndrome of too weak aggregate demand and output? In the case of transitional causes, unemployment is expected to decline over time. Otherwise, it would po...

“I Want to, But I Also Need to”: Start-Ups Resulting from Opportunity and Necessity When unemployed persons go into business, they often are characterized as necessity entrepreneurs, because push factors, namely their unemployment, likely prompted their decision. In contrast to this, business founders who have been previously employed represent opportunity entrepreneurs because pull factors pro...