In this article we study the resilience of the Portuguese labor market, in terms of job flows, employment and wage developments, in the context of the current recession. We single out the huge contribution of job destruction, especially due to the closing of existing firms, to the dramatic...

At first blush, most advances in labor demand were achieved by the late 1980s. Since then progress might appear to have stalled. We argue to the contrary that significant progress has been made in understanding labor market frictions and imperfections, and in modeling search behavior and...

This paper investigates the reasons why firms use fixed-term contracts.Two distinctive features of these contracts - reduced firing costs and the prohibition of contract rollover - are highlighted. Firms' decision related to temporary contracts - the choice of the contract on offer and contract...

In this paper we look at fixed-term contracts and examine the main features of temporary as opposed to regular employment, keeping the focus on employment careers and wage dynamics of workers employed under fixed-term contracts. Previous work found that fixed-term contracts serve as screening...

In this paper we discuss the structure of labor adjustment costs in relationship to the dynamics of job and worker flows. Using high frequency data, we document a previously unsuspected degree of lumpiness in employment adjustment, which is characteristic of non-convex adjustment costs. By means...

The consequences of aggregation, temporal or spatial, for the estimation of demand models are theoretically well-known, but have not been documented empirically with appropriate data before. In this paper we conduct a simple, but instructive, exercise to fill in this gap, using a large quarterly...

This paper investigates the reasons why firms use fixed-term contracts. Two distinctive features of these contracts - reduced firing costs and the prohibition of contract rollover - are highlighted. Firms' decisions related to temporary contracts - the choice of the contract on offer and...

The consequences of aggregation, temporal or spatial, for the estimation of demand models are theoretically well-known, but have not been documented empirically with appropriate data before. In this paper we conduct a simple, but instructive, exercise to fill in this gap, using a large quarterly...

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...

In this article we document the patterns of employment adjustment at the micro level. We find clear evidence of lumpy adjustment consistent with the presence of nonconvexities in the adjustment technology—inaction is pervasive, action spells are short-lived, and extreme adjustment episodes are...