This paper investigates the social preferences over labor market exibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand. We demonstrate that how the economy responds to productivity shocks depends on the power of labor to extract rents and on the status quo level of the firing cost....

This paper investigates social preferences over employment protection regulation in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand and sheds some light on the comparative dynamics of Eurosclerosis. When firing costs are low, a transition to a rigid labor market is favored by all the...

This paper investigates the social preferences over labor market flexibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand where the productivity of active firms evolves as a Geometric Brownian motion. A key result demonstrated is that how the economy responds to shocks, i.e....