Contrary to popular belief, layoff announcements do not always lead to reduced employment. Using hand-collected data on layoff announcements for S&P 500 firms, I show that 32% of layoffs announced do not lead to employment downsizing. While the market, in the short run, does not react...

We investigate the impact of mass layoff announcements on the equity value of industry rivals. When a layoff announcement conveys good (bad) news for the announcer, rivals on average witness a 0.44 percent increase (0.60 percent decrease) in cumulative abnormal stock returns. This effect is...

Using data on layoff announcements by S&P 500 firms, we show that layoff announcements mostly contain industrywide news. Competitors' stock price reactions are positively correlated with the announcer's returns. This contagion effect is stronger for competitors whose values depend on growth...

This study investigates market reactions to announcements of CEO turnover and finds that forced turnovers are not accompanied by positive returns, which contradicts the broad view that firing a CEO sends a positive signal to the market. This contradiction is further explored by focusing on the...

This paper examines whether suppliers suffer from information externalities when their major customers make layoff announcements. We find suppliers, on average, experience a negative stock price reaction around their major customers' layoff announcements. Furthermore, the negative price effect...

We investigate a prevalent, but understudied, employment protection policy: mandatory advance notice (MN), requiring employers to notify employees of forthcoming layoffs. MN increases future production, as notified workers search on the job, but reduces current production as they supply less...

We investigate a prevalent, but understudied, employment protection policy: mandatory advance notice (MN), requiring employers to notify employees of forthcoming layoffs. MN increases future production, as notified workers search on the job, but reduces current production as they supply less...

We collect rich establishment-level data about advance layoff notices filed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act since January 1990. We present in-sample evidence that the number of workers affected by WARN notices leads state-level initial unemployment insurance...

We investigate a prevalent, but understudied, employment protection policy: mandatory advance notice (MN), requiring employers to notify employees of forthcoming layoffs. MN increases future production, as notified workers search on the job, but reduces current production as they supply less...

In all OECD countries, Mandatory Notice (MN) policies require firms to inform workers in advance of a layoff. In our theoretical framework, MN helps workers avoid unemployment and find better jobs by encouraging workers to search for a new job while still employed, thereby increasing future...