Due to the complexity of employment protection legislation (EPL) in Germany, there is notable uncertainty about the outcomes of dismissal conflicts. In this study we focus on severance pay and inquire whether its incidence and level varies in a systematic manner with the legal rules as defined...

Most industrialized countries today are facing historical demographic changes, paring increasing retirement with a declining labor force. We study the consequences of an increasing pensioner-worker ratio in a macroeconomic framework, which suggests a negative effect on total factor productivity....

This paper assesses sources of productivity spillovers in China's electric and electronic manufacturing industry using a rich panel data-set of 25,360 firms observed over the period 2004-2007. This industry is characterized by its important reliance on technology. In particular, the paper...

This paper assesses the role of intra-sectoral spillovers in total factor productivity across Chinese producers in the chemical industry. We use a rich panel data-set of 12,552 firms observed over the period 2004-2006 and model output by the firm as a function of skilled and unskilled labor,...

Most industrialized countries today are facing historical demographic changes, paring increasing retirement with a declining labor force. We study the consequences of an increasing pensioner-worker ratio in a macroeconomic framework, which suggests a negative effect on total factor productivity....

This paper examines the interaction between productivity growth, firms' monopolistic market power, and workers' wage bargaining power. Our study contributes to several strands of literatures. First, we examine a monopolistic framework which accounts for wage bargaining. In addition to the other...

Whether or not the use of remote work increases firm labour productivity is theoretically ambiguous. We use a rich and representative sample of Portuguese firms, and within-firm variation in the policy on remote work, over the period 2011-2016, to empirically assess the causal productivity...

This paper investigates the asymptotic local power of the the averaged t-test of Im, Pesaran and Shin (2003, IPS hereafter) in the presence of both initial explosive conditions and incidental trends. By utilizing the least squares detrending methods, it is found that the initial condition plays...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (the IMF) and a country has for the optimal design of conditional reforms. Our model predicts that when agency problems are especially severe, and/or IMF information is valuable, a centralized control is indeed...

In 2004, a section was added to the German Protection against Dismissal Act, establishing a new procedure to dismiss an employee, given a predetermined severance payment. Most legal scholars presume the change to be without impact, while a minority of experts claims it to be either beneficial or...