This paper studies the effect of mandated severance pay in a matching model featuring wage rigidity for ongoing, but not new, matches. Mandated severance pay matters only if binding real wage rigidities imply inefficient separation under employment at will. In such a case, large enough severance...

This paper is a quantitative, equilibrium study of the insurance role of severance pay when workers face displacement risk and markets are incomplete. A key feature of our model is that, in line with an established empirical literature, job displacement entails a persistent fall in earnings upon...