Providing a grounding in the concepts of labour markets, this work features extensive coverage of worker-employer relationships, offering some long-range findings with distinct applications for the future, and an increased focus on the international labour

It is claimed that many regulatory rules enforce inefficiencies in order to achieve the appearance of cost control. We assess the importance of these claims by measuring the effect of New York state's compulsory multiple contractor law on the cost of public construction in New York City. Multiple contractor laws, which exist in many states, prohibit the use of general contractors in order to promote the appearance of competition. Contrasts of construction costs between buildings with identical blind cost estimates indicate that this law increases public construction costs by 8% and increases construction delays by more than a calendar year.

The geographic distance between a household and financial institutions may constitute a significant obstacle to achieving the benefits of modern financial institutions. We measure the impact of improved distance-related access to microcredits in Uzbekistan. Residents living closer to microfinance institutions are propensity score matched to those further away using both household and village characteristics. Households located closer to microfinance institutions have larger businesses in terms of income, profits and employees than similar households located further away. Similarly, they spend more on most forms of consumption and have greater savings.

We analyze the response of tax evasion to the introduction of a flat tax in several transition economies. Using a novel estimator based on household level data, we show that in most of the studied countries there was no discernible effect on the measured size of unreported income following flat tax reform. This may imply that decreases in marginal tax rate may frequently have been accompanied by parallel deterioration in attitudes towards public services and these countries' government in general as the only countries that show a response to the flat tax reform appear to be those where satisfaction with government services increased. Additionally, our results show a pro-cyclicality of the size of the shadow economy that is in line with previous research.