這兩篇關於勞動市場的研究乍看之下有些反常識，但其實都挺合理：
‧Labor Laws and Innovation – NBER
Stringent labor laws can provide firms a commitment device to not punish short-run failures and thereby spur their employees to pursue value-enhancing innovative activities. Using patents and citations as proxies for innovation, we identify this effect by exploiting the time-series variation generated by staggered country-level changes in dismissal laws. We find that within a country, innovation and economic growth are fostered by stringent laws governing dismissal of employees, especially in the more innovation-intensive sectors. Firm-level tests within the United States that exploit a discontinuity generated by the passage of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act confirm the cross-country evidence.
1980年代與自由化、私有化一同興起的「彈性化（flexibilization）」論，差不多把「解除勞動市場管制」無限上綱，不論是工作福利、勞動條件、團體協約、工作內容等等各種層面的規約，皆排上了應予彈性化的清單。但其實在當時就有不少修正主義路線的研究指出：某一面向的彈性化可能需要其他面向的”rigidity”作為補充或支撐，比如有好的福利保障才能激發工人更靈活彈性的工作表現，因此完全的彈性化在現實上未必可行或有效。這篇NBER的研究就屬於這種。
‧Immigration and productive tasks: Can immigrant workers benefit native workers? – VOX
Several studies find that immigrants do not harm the wages and job prospects of native workers. This column seeks to explain these somewhat counterintuitive findings by emphasizing the scope for complementarities between foreign-born and native workers. Examining 14 European countries from 1996 to 2007, it finds that immigrants often supply manual skills, leaving native workers to take up jobs that require more complex skills – even boosting demand for them. Immigrants replace “tasks”, not workers.
一般人談到移工（or外勞），講的都是他們搶了我們的工作的「替代效果」，但其實移工也會有「互補效果」，也就是低階勞工增加，與其配合的高階勞工也會相應增加，一減一加，總的結果「未必」會使本國工人失業增加。只要是比較嚴謹的文獻都會提到這一點，可惜一般都只拿「外勞搶工作」的部分出來講，於是便形成了強烈的刻板印象。
當然，這裡仍有一個難題：被移工替代的與因移工而補上的，在現實上通常並非同一群人，形成低階的「受害」而高階的「受益」，兩類工作之間的流動絕非想像中容易。
