The Great Recession raised the concern that employment protective institutions that are effective during macroeconomic stability might become counterproductive under growing macroeconomic volatility. We study this question by examining the relationship between employment protection legislation (EPL) and unemployment scars on earnings in 21 countries during the period surrounding the Great Recession. We use harmonized work history data for 21 countries from 2004 to 2014 and combine propensity score matching and multilevel-regression to estimate how earnings losses due to unemployment vary with the strength of labor market regulation and over changing macroeconomic conditions. We find that unemployment scarring is lower in contexts with robust employment protection, both under positive and negative macroeconomic environments. We also show that economic downturns intensify unemployment scarring significantly more in countries with weak EPL, largely because long-term unemployment is more strongly penalized. Taken together, our study finds that the positive effects of employment protection for workers remain robust during economic downturns.

The 2008 housing crisis and the changes in lending practices that led up to it shook the status of home loans as secure debt in the United States. The crisis hit during a time when many young adults had recently bought their first home, making it a particularly consequential moment in their homeownership career. We investigate the effects of the housing crisis on the mental health of young homeowners using longitudinal data. We model levels of anxiety among young homeowners carrying mortgage debt before and after the recession as an early indicator of how the crisis affected the experience of home loans. The positive effects of being a mortgaged homeowner before the recession declined significantly after the housing crisis. We discuss whether this shift may portend a longer-term shift in American beliefs in the value of investing in housing, with significant implications for financial well-being and wealth stratification.

We review the theoretical and empirical literatures on the role of institutions on national development as a prelude to present a more rigorous and measurable definition of the concept and a methodology to study this relationship at the national and subnational levels. The existing research literature features conflicting definitions of the concept of "institutions" and empirical tests based mostly on reputational indices, with countries as units of analysis. The present study's methodology is based on a set of five strategic organizations studied comparatively in five Latin American countries. These include key federal agencies, public administrative organizations, and stock exchanges. Systematic analysis of results show a pattern of differences between economically-oriented institutions and those entrusted with providing basic services to the general population. Consistent differences in institutional quality also emerge across countries, despite similar levels of economic development. Using the algebraic methods developed by Ragin, we test six hypotheses about factors determining the developmental character of particular institutions. Implications of results for theory and for methodological practices of future studies in this field are discussed.