Using data over a thirty-four year span on UK quoted firms, this paper seeks to identify the factors that increase the likelihood of exit of firms. Firms may disappear through the mutually precluding events of bankruptcies and acquisitions. We use a competing-risks hazard model to determine...

Differences in employment protection across countries appear to be quite persistent over time. One mechanism that could explain this persistence is the so called constituency effect: high employment protection creates a mass of workers in favor of maintaining high protection because deregulation...

Social comparisons are important in the employment sphere. A "culture of unemployment" may evolve and prevail because it is optimal for an individual to remain unemployed when other unemployed individuals constitute his main reference group. We advance the idea that by making the receipt of...

Social comparisons are important in the employment sphere. A "culture of unemployment" may evolve and prevail because it is optimal for an individual to remain unemployed when other unemployed individuals constitute his main reference group. We advance the idea that by making the receipt of...

Die internationale Diskussion der letzten Jahrzehnte hat zur Frage nach einer effizienten Gestaltung der Einkommenssicherung von Arbeitslosen eine Reihe von Vorschlägen hervorgebracht, wie die von Beenstock/Brasse, Feldstein /Altman, Grubel und Orzag/Snower. Sie werden dargestellt und bewertet....

Redundancy payments for collective dismissals are incorporated into a Shapiro-Stiglitz model of efficiency wages. It is shown that a fixed payment will lower wages, leave employment and welfare unaffected if there are no wage-dependent taxes, no additional firing costs and if unemployment...

We consider an economy characterised by involuntary unemployment among low skilled workers, and investigate the implications for employment and income of welfare schemes often advocated as less distortionary. We show that reducing unemployment benefits in favour of income subsidies (social...

This paper tests whether the job security offered by stricter employment protection legislation (EPL) undermines positive compensating wage differentials that would otherwise be paid. Specifically, we ask whether industries with relatively more need for layoffs and labour flexibility have lower...

Since the UsedSoft ruling of the CJEU in 2012 there has been the distinct feeling that – like the big bang - UsedSoft signals the start of a new beginning. As we enter this brave new world, the Copyright Directive will be read anew: Misalignments in the treatment of physical and digital...

This paper attempts to explain the growth of labour productivity through (inter)national spillovers from R&D and patenting. We develop a model that is tested for Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America using a new set of panel data for the period 1955 until 1991. The...