In many countries, the termination of employment contracts has to be either on employer initiative or on employee initiative. In 2008, the French government introduced a change in doctrine: it became possible to terminate employment contracts by mutual consent at a lower cost. We show that the...

In many countries, the termination of employment contracts has to be either on employer initiative or on employee initiative. Furthermore, the cost of the procedure is borne mainly by the contracting party who takes the initiative and there is little room for sharing costs. The implicit doctrine...

In this paper we investigate whether a relaxation in seniority rules (the "last-in-first-out"-principle) had any effect on firms' employment behaviour. Seniority rules exist in several countries and, like Sweden, most European countries have a more lenient employment protection for firms below a...