This paper analyzes the determinants of lay-offs, job-to-job movements and totalseparations with a unique data set that combines information on individual firmsand their workers. We are in particular interested in whether the lay-offpolicy of firms can explain the relatively high level of...

This study looks into the use of fixed term contracts and agency work in Russia during and shortly after the crisis 2009-10 with the help of an enterprise survey. The results of variance analysis show that the use of fixed-term or agency work contracts is not uniform across sectors, size and...

This paper presents quantitative information on labour market flows for 25 OECD countries. It uses household surveys that offer the advantage of reporting monthly transitions between employment, unemployment and economic inactivity for individuals. Between 2005 and 2012, the annual probability...

Fixed-term contracts (FTCs) may be an important tool to promote employment, particularly in recessions or when permanent contracts are costly. Therefore, it may be useful to vary some of the legal parameters of FTCs over the business cycle, namely increasing their flexibility during downturns....

This paper presents new evidence on the evolution of job polarisation over time and across skill groups in Spain between 1994 and 2008. Spain has experienced job polarisation over the whole period, with growth at the upper part of the wage distribution always exceeding that in the lower part....

Is moving to the countryside a credible commitment device for couples? Weinvestigate whether lowering the arrival rate of potential alternative partners bymoving to a less populated area lowers the dissolution risk for a sample of Danishcouples. We find that of the couples who married in the...

In this paper we analyse the commuting distribution from a job search perspective.We have examined under which conditions the commuting distribution is unimodal which isone of the stylised facts of commuting. It appears that a necessary condition is that space istwo-dimensional. Furthermore, one...

In this paper, we employ search theory as a micro-economic foundation for the wasteful commuting hypothesis. It is argued that the commute of the self-employed is the result of a search process for vacant workplaces, whereas employees search for vacant jobs through space. Because the arrival...

Although the quantitative relationship between employment cyclicality and wage cyclicality is central for the dynamics of macroeconomic models, there is little empirical evidence on this topic. We use the German AWFP dataset to document that wage cyclicalities are very heterogeneous across...

The labour market in Russia is very flexible. Firms adjust to economic shocks through wage cuts, working hour reductions and minimisation of non-wage labour costs. Workers react by changing jobs. This results in a high and stable overall employment rate, but also high wage inequality,...