Temporary help agencies are among the largest employers of American workers today. Depending upon the interpretation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts between 3 and 30 million Americans in contingent and part-time work arrangements. We model firms' use of contingent labor in maximizing...

This paper constructs a theory of the coexistence of fixed-term and permanent employment contracts in an environment with ex ante identical workers and employers. Workers under fixed-term contracts can be dismissed at no cost while permanent employees enjoy labor protection. In a labor market...

Do firms employing undocumented workers have a competitive advantage? Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the incidence of undocumented worker employment across firms and how it affects firm survival. Firms are found to engage in herding behavior, being...

This article is an idiosyncratic survey of the insider-outsider theory, describing the vision underlying the theory, and evaluating salient contributions to the literature in the light of this vision. We also indicate what appear to have been dead-ends and red herrings in past research. 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 between...

In this paper we analyse the employment implications of firing restrictions. We find that when a recession is expected and the trend rate of productivity growth is small, a rise in firing costs affects mainly the hiring decision. Thus there is a negative effect on average employment. When, on...

The standard literature on working time has modelled 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 follow the real options approach, which allows us to investigate the...

Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird von einem ökonomischen Standpunkt aus theoretischer Sicht untersucht, ob durch eine Lockerung des Kündigungsschutzes in Zeiten hoher Arbeitslosigkeit die Beschäftigung gesteigert werden kann, wenn die Antizipation eines hohen Kündigungsschutzes durch die...