Using a representative establishment data set for Germany, we show that, in line with the existing literature for several countries, firms' adjustment costs for employment are characterized by a fixed and convex functional form. Furthermore, they are asymmetric with dismissal costs exceeding...

Temporary forms of employment account for a variable but never trivial share of total employment in both the U.S. and in Europe. In this article we look at how one specific form of temporary employment - employment with fixed-term contracts - fits into employers' hiring policies. We find that...

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...

The standard literature on working time has modeled the decisions of firms in a deterministic framework in which firms can choose between employment and overtime (given mandated standard hours). Contrary to this approach, we consider the impact of uncertainty and real options on the decision of...

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...

We analyze the conditions under which an (S,s) rule may be derived and compare these with alternative rules. We consider the case of labor demand with fixed adjustment costs. The (S,s) rule implies a specific ordering of choices: downward adjustment, non-adjustment and upward adjustment with the...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model that integrates inventory and labor decisions. We extend a model of inventory behavior to include a detailed specification of the role of labor input in the production process and of the costs associated with it. In particular, we distinguish...

This paper provides a cross-country perspective to the firm-level analysis of the relation between foreign ownership and labour demand. We estimate labour demand equations in eleven European countries using dynamic panel data techniques on samples that permit to distinguish the ownership status...

A relatively unexplored question in dynamic labour demand regards the source of adjustment costs, whether they depend on net or gross changes in employment. We estimate a structural model of dynamic labour demand where the firm faces adjustment costs related to gross and net changes in its...