Insider-outsider theory suggests that in dual labour markets two groups have opposing preferences regarding protection against dismissals: insiders defend employment protection, because it increases their rents. Outsiders see it as a mobility barrier and demand deregulation. Similar divides are...

The paper examines severance pay programs around the world by providing the first ever overview of existing programs, examining their historic development, assessing their economic rationale and describing current reform attempts. While a significant part of the paper is devoted to a...

Graduating from a school during a time of adverse economic conditions has a persistent, harmful effect on workers' subsequent employment opportunities. An analysis of panel data from OECD countries during the 1960-2010 periods reveals that a worker who experiences a one-percentage-point higher...

This paper examines both the determinants and the effects of changes in the rigidity of labor market legislation across countries over time. Recent research identifies the origin of the legal system as being a major determinant of the cross-country variation in the rigidity of employment...

This paper examines the impact of increasing the relative cost of fixed-term contracts on labor demand as well as the demand for standard measures of human capital and specific skill requirements. We evaluate a 2018 Italian labor law reform that raised the cost of fixed- term contracts while...

Theory predicts that the wage effects of government-mandated severance payments depend on workers' and firms' relative bargaining power. This paper estimates the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on workers' individual wages in a quasi-experimental setting, exploiting a reform...

All OECD countries have either legally mandated severance pay or compensations imposed by industry-level bargaining in case of employer initiated job separations. According to the extensive literature on Employment Protection Legislation such transfers are either ineffective or highly...

This paper analyses the optimal design of a single open-ended contract (SOEC) and studies the political economy of moving towards such a SOEC in a labour market where employment protection is highly discontinuous. We develop a computationally tractable approach to compare two economic...

Labour market segmentation currently is at the forefront of national and European policy debates. While the European Commission and the OECD try to promote what they see as more inclusive policies, academic observers remain skeptical. Particularly the dualisation literature points to stable...

Leveraging a major Italian reform enacted in June 2012 that eroded employment protection to workers on permanent contracts, we use detailed administrative data to estimate how this reduction affected the cost of job loss. We employ a stacked-by-event research design, which compares workers...