In this article we study the resilience of the Portuguese labor market, in terms of job flows, employment and wage developments, in the context of the current recession. We single out the huge contribution of job destruction, especially due to the closing of existing firms, to the dramatic...

This paper estimates a structural model of the employment decision of the firm. Our establishment level data displays an extreme degree of rigidity in that employment levels are largely constant throughout our sample. This can be due to the fact that establishments face large shocks but also...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of a technology shock in the euro area within a structural VAR framework. Since the impact of these shocks on labor use is a controversial issue in the related literature, we give particular attention to it. Given that the estimated effects of a...

This paper argues that nominal wage inertia is a structural feature in low-inflation economies. Using a quarterly data set for six G7 countries we show that, unlike price inflation, nominal wage inflation responds sluggishly to both monetary and technology shocks. Accounting for this inertial...

Using a longitudinal matched employer-employee data set for Portugal over the 1986-2005 period, this study analyzes the heterogeneity in wages responses to aggregate labor market conditions for newly hired workers and existing workers. Accounting for both worker and firm heterogeneity, the data...

This paper uses firm level survey data from Portugal to investigate how firms adjust their labour costs in the presence of wage rigidities. We document that Portuguese firms, besides reducing employment or freezing nominal base wages, also make frequent use of other cost-cutting strategies, like...

In this paper we look at fixed-term contracts and examine the main features of temporary as opposed to regular employment, keeping the focus on employment careers and wage dynamics of workers employed under fixed-term contracts. Previous work found that fixed-term contracts serve as screening...

In this paper we discuss the structure of labor adjustment costs in relationship to the dynamics of job and worker flows. Using high frequency data, we document a previously unsuspected degree of lumpiness in employment adjustment, which is characteristic of non-convex adjustment costs. By means...

This paper exploits an area-based pilot experiment to identify average treatment effects on unemployment duration of treated individuals of two active labor market programs implemented in Portugal. We focus on the short-term heterogeneous impact on two subpopulations of unemployed individuals:...