This paper uses information from a rich firm-level survey on wage and price-setting procedures, in around 15,000 firms in 15 European Union countries, to investigate the relative importance of internal versus external factors in the setting of wages of newly hired workers. The evidence suggests...

We investigate the interaction between labour and credit market imperfections for the determination of equilibrium unemployment within the framework of the right-tomanage approach. Our analysis highlights the critical role of labour mobility for the evaluation of the employment implications of...

We investigate the interaction between labor and credit market imperfections for the determination of equilibrium unemployment within the framework of the "right-to-manage" approach. Our analysis highlights the critical role of labor mobility for the evaluation of the employment implications of...

This paper studies a labor market with directed search, where multi-worker firms follow a firm wage policy: They pay equally productive workers the same. The policy reduces wages, due to the influence of firms’ existing workers on their wage setting problem, increasing the profitability...

This paper considers a two-period optimal contracting model in which firms make new hires in the second period subject to the constraint that they cannot pay discriminate either against or in favour of the new hires. Under an assumption on the information available to workers, it is shown that...

We introduce dynamic incentive contracts into a model of unemployment dynamics and present three results. First, wage cyclicality from incentives does not dampen unemployment dynamics: the response of unemployment to shocks is first-order equivalent in an economy with flexible incentive pay and...

When we analyse the labour market consequences of labour tax reforms in a model of firm-union wage bargaining, minor changes in the formulation of the union`s fallback option can have drastic effects. This paper compares two variants of the model in which either workers have no reemployment...

Though a lot of work has been done on the distribution of job tenures, we are still uncertain about its main determinants.In this paper, we stress random shocks to match productivity after the start of an employment relation.The specificity of investment makes hiring and separation decisions...

This study was prepared by Beate Schirwitz while she was working at the Ifo Institute’s Dresden Branch. It was completed in February 2012 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Faculty of Law, Management, and Economics at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in July 2012. It focuses on a...

We develop a two-country labour-market model characterised by union wage-bargaining, in which the unemployed incur individual-specific costs of seeking work abroad. We explore the effects on equilibrium unemployment and population in each country of changes in union bargaining strength,...