Firing costs have two separate dimensions: a transfer from the firm to the laid-off worker and a tax paid outside the firm-worker pair. To avoid the 'bonding critique' most of the existing literature implicitly assumes that, in the presence of wage rigidity, transfers have the same real effects...

Labour market reforms increasing flexibility 'at the margin' have been recently paying out in terms of employment growth. This article argues that two-tier labour market reforms have a transitional 'honeymoon', job creating effect. In a dynamic model of labour demand under uncertainty, the...