According to the Hutchens (1999) model, early retirement is not explained as a result ofmaximizing expected individual utility but rather as a demand-side phenomenon arising froma firm’s profit-maximizing behaviour...

Firms select not only how many, but also which workers to hire. Yet, in standard searchmodels of the labor market, all workers have the same probability of being hired. We arguethat selective hiring crucially affects welfare analysis. Our model is isomorphic to a searchmodel under random hiring...

The Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact onnational labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also variedgreatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurancebenefits and minimum...

This paper analyzes the effect of firing costs on aggregate productivity growth. For thispurpose, a model of endogenous growth through selection and imitation is developed. It isconsistent with recent evidence on firm dynamics and on the importance of reallocation forproductivity growth...

This paper provides evidence about the effects of dismissals-for-cause requirements, aspecific component of employment protection legislation that has received little attentiondespite its potential relevance. We study a quasi-natural experiment generated by a lawintroduced in Portugal in 1989:...

Recent empirical evidence has found that employment services and small-businessassistance programmes are often successful at getting the unemployed back to work. Oneimportant concern of policy makers is to decide which of these two programmes is moreeffective and for whom...

In Portugal duration of benefits is exclusively age determined while replacement rates are toall intents and purposes uniform. We exploit differences in potential maximum duration ofbenefits for nearly matched pairs of individuals who differ in age by one year and in potentialmaximum duration of...

Evidently, the benefit-structure of the unemployment insurance has a significant influence onprofits and trade union utility. We show for a wage bargaining model that a stronger earningsrelationship of unemployment benefits may reduce wages and increase employment. Thisraises the question as to...