The potentially adverse labor market effects of severance pay mandates are a continuingsource of policy concern. In a seminal study, Lazear (1990) found that contract avoidance ofseverance pay firing costs was theoretically simple – a bonding scheme would do – but thatempirically the labor...

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