This paper documents the large cross-country differences in labor institutions that make them a candidate explanatory factor for the divergent economic performance of countries and reviews what economists have learned about the effects of these institutions on economic outcomes. It identifies...

[...]This paper examines the operation of the U.S. labor marketin the 2001 recovery. Because the United States is in the middleof the recovery, ours is a real-time analysis; thus, someconclusions could change if the recovery stalls or employmentgrows suddenly. For instance, since August 2003,...