Firing costs due to employment protection legislation have two separate dimensions: a transfer from the firm to the worker to be laid off and a tax paid outside the firm-worker pair. We document that quantitatively transfers are a much larger component than taxes. Nevertheless, to avoid the...

This Paper develops a model with multiple steady states (low tax and low unemployment versus high tax and high unemployment) in which equilibrium selection is not conditioned on a sunspot variable. Instead, large temporary shocks initiate unavoidable transitions from one steady state to another....

An incomplete markets life-cycle model with indivisible labour makes career lengths and human capital accumulation respond to labour tax rates and government supplied non-employment benefits. We compare aggregate and individual outcomes in this individualistic incomplete markets model with those...

Under symmetric information, a job protection law that says that a principal who has hired an agent today must also employ them tomorrow can only reduce the two parties’ total surplus. The law restricts the principal’s possibilities to maximize their profit, which equals the total surplus,...

General equilibrium analysis of layoff costs have had mixed messages on the implications for employment. This Paper brings out the economic forces at work and explains the disparate results. Specifically, we show that positive employment effects of layoff costs come through reducing labour...

This Paper describes the changes in the composition of the labour force in the last 35 years and quantifies the substitution of low education / high experience workers by low experience / high education workers by using US and French microdata. The consequences of this substitution on the wage...

European regions have experienced a polarisation of their unemployment rates between 1986 and 1996, as regions with intermediate rates have moved towards either extreme. This process has been driven by changes in regional employment, only partly offset by labour force changes. Regions' outcomes...

Prisdannelsen og faktorefterspørgslen i Det økonomiske Råds sekretariats SMEC-model af dansk <p> økonomi har siden 1998 været teoretisk begrundet i en underliggende Cobb-Douglas teknologi (i <p> kombination med en antagelse om omkostningsminimering). I SMEC-forgængeren SMEC 94 var det <p> derimod...</p></p></p>

Several papers have examined the intergenerational transmission of well being by looking at the relationship between parents' and children's income. However, by concentrating on those who are working these studies exclude some of the very poorest in society, the long-term unemployed. In this...

In this paper we examine the long-term effects of the Restart unemployment program introduced in the U.K. in 1987. The program was aimed at the long-term unemployed and involved a combination of tighter monitoring of benefit eligibility rules and increased job search assistance. We compare...