Are product market and entry regulation key sources of low employment growth in many European countries? We investigate this question in the context of the French retail trade industry. Since 1974, approval by regional zoning boards has been required for the creation or extension of any large...

Building upon a continuous-time model of search with Nash bargaining in a stationary environment, we analyze the effect of changes in minimum wages on labor market outcomes and welfare. While minimum wage increases invariably lead to employment losses in our model, they may be welfare-improving...

In this paper we conduct a theoretical analysis of the implications of a union which can exploit the existence of firm labour adjustment costs. We consider a model involving a large number of identical firms facing a single, economy-wide union. We solve (i) for the Markov perfect equilibria with...

This paper explicitly differentiates between unemployment and inactivity, by defining inactivity as a state in which individuals do not search for jobs when non-employed. Facing changes in the value of inactivity, individuals transit through three labor market states. In steady-state, we hence...

The minimum wage rate has been introduced in many countries as a means of alleviating the poverty of the working poor. This paper shows, however, that an imperfectly enforced minimum wage rate causes small firms to face an upward-sloping labor supply schedule. Since this turns these firms into...

The introduction of firm size into labor search models raises the question how wages are set when average and marginal product differ. We develop and analyze an alternative to the existing bargaining framework: Firms compete for labor by publicly posting long- term contracts. In such a...

There is a growing concern about collective wage agreement and employment dynamics in Germany. In this paper, evidence is provided on the way collective wage agreements affect the adjustment of working hours, employment and other production factors when firms from the service sector are faced...

Der Beitrag untersucht die Verbreitung von Tarifverträgen in Dienstleistungsunternehmen sowie deren Wirkungen auf die Beschäftigungspolitik im Falle von Nachfrageschwankungen. Der empirische Teil basiert auf der ZEW/Creditreform Konjunkturumfrage bei unternehmensnahen...

Between 1993 and 1995, the majority of German firms in services introduced new organizational practices (OC), in particular total quality management systems, certified ISO 9000, lean administration, flatter hierarchies, delegation of authority and ICT-enabled organizational changes). This paper...

This paper investigates whether and in what sense the west German wage structure has been ?rigid? in the 1990s. To test the hypothesis that a rigid wage structure has been responsible for rising low-skilled unemployment, I propose a methodology which makes less restrictive identifying...