This paper studies the effects of aggregate, industry-, and firm-specific factors on the exit hazard rates in the market for daily newspapers in The Netherlands from 1950 to 1996. We present a brief overview of the exit literature. On the basis of the existing empirical evidence, we decided to...

We present a semiparametric method to estimate group-level dispersion, which is particularly effective in the presence of censored data. We apply this procedure to obtain measures of occupation-specific wage dispersion using top-coded administrative wage data from the German IAB Employment...

This paper develops a theoretical model of a worker's decision problem under uncertainty about the optimal separation time, when holding a representative outside offer but facing fixed costs of quitting. Implications of the model's closed form solution are consistent with the quit behavior of...

Optimal layoff rules in closed form are derived for all workers in a firm that downsizes under uncertainty and faces heterogeneous firing costs. The theoretical model predicts that the firm displaces workers with low firing costs, low expected future productivity growth, and low layoff option...

We develop a theory of the market for individual reputation, an indicator of regard by one’s peers and others. The central questions are: 1) Does the quantity of exposures raise reputation independent of their quality? and 2) Assuming that overall quality matters for reputation, does the...

In this paper we study the joint decision process of changing the structure of jobs and laying off individual workers in a firm that downsizes its workforce. A hierarchical decision model is proposed and estimated using personnel data from a firm in demise comparing the characteristics of the...

A structural model is developed and estimated by a maximum likelihood routine to investigate interrelated factor demand subject to nonconvex adjustment costs. The dataset concerns Norwegian plants operating in manufacturing industries and it covers the period 1993-2005. The estimates indicate...

We study the self-employed decision and its relation to human and social capital. Human capital is necessary to acquire skills. Social capital dampens the effects of uncertainty about future income. Our data set consists of 1339 respondents from the same age group, who were interviewed three...

Dismissal disputes occur mostly in recessions and often lead to long and costly contract termination procedures. This paper investigates how dispute procedures may affect the job-matching process. First we present a simple accounting frame- work that corresponds with general dismissal...

This paper studies the event history of business foundation. Three theoretical concepts of human, financial and social capital are linked to investigate variations over time of people's decision processes to become self-employed. Data from a cohort of Dutch inhabitants born in 1939/1940 who have...