Credit Market Constraints and Labor Market Decisions In this paper, we examine whether imperfections in credit markets spill over to other markets, particularly the labor market. We take the case of Italy, a country that experienced changes in the mortgage market brought about by the 1992 European unification and other institutional shifts. These events make Italy a good laboratory to study the...

We propose a nonparametric approach for estimating single-index, binarychoice models when parametric models such as Probit and Logit are potentially misspecified. The new approach involves two steps: first, we estimate index coefficients using sliced inverse regression without specifying a parametric probability function a priori; second, we estimate the unknown probability function using kerne...

Because of heterogeneity across regions, economic policy measures are increasingly targeted at the regional level, and the need for forecasts at the regional level is rapidly increasing. The data available to compute regional forecasts is usually based on a pseudo-panel of a limited number of observations over time, and a large number of areas (regions) strongly interacting with each other. The...

This article evaluates an expansion of employer-mandated sick leave from 80 to 100 percent of forgone gross wages in Germany. We employ and compare parametric difference-in-difference (DID), matching DID, and mixed approaches. Overall workplace absences increased by at least 10 percent or 1 day per worker per year. We show that taking partial compliance into account increases coefficient estima...

Do Literacy and Numeracy Pay Off? On the Relationship between Basic Skills and Earnings Is there a reward for basic skills in the German labor market? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from the ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as administrati...

A common view in the literature is that the director labor market provides an ex post settling-up for past decisions by rewarding CEO ability and actions that are consistent with shareholder interests. In this paper we focus on large CEO acquisition decisions to investigate whether the director labor market offers ex post settling-up for value destroying decisions. Prior studies have found that...

Determining the effects of labor institutions on macroeconomic performance is a central concern of economic policymakers. Differences in labor institutions have been conjectured to be a key explanation for observed crosscountry differences in the level and persistence of unemployment, in the distribution of income and wealth, and in growth rates for labor productivity and GDP. European OECD cou...