Unemployment Propensity and Unemployment Duration

ABSTRACT: This paper analyses the factors affecting the duration of an unemployment spell. The results indicate the absence of statistically significant ‘‘duration dependence‘‘ effects for men. Person-specific unemployment propensity is found to have a significant effect on re-employment probabilities. The latter implies an unequal distribution of unemployment burden among the population.     

Unions,Firing Costs,and Unemployment

Abstract. We study the effects of firing costs in unionized economies with heterogeneous workers. We consider an overlapping generations model where workers participate in the labour market both when young and when old. All workers belong to the same union that sets wages unilaterally. We find that at given wages firing costs increase youth unemployment and decrease old‐age unemployment. However, once the wage response is considered, firing costs increase both youth and old‐age unemployment. Indeed, knowing that when firing costs are higher firms refrain from firing, the union increases the wage of old workers, and, therefore, old‐age unemployment increases.     

Unemployment,Labour Institutions and Innovation

ABSTRACT: This contribution endorses the transactional trilogy of institutional economics in order to suggest a theoretical framework for re-examining the relationships between unemployment, labour institutions, and technological and organisational innovation. Labour institutions are usually called into question in the debates on European unemployment. Although the advocates of the biased technological change thesis defend it in order to improve the employment of unskilled workers, this article argues that a deregulation of the labour market may in fact generate losses of dynamic efficiency with respect to knowledge accumulation, the organisation of production and national capabilities of innovation. In addition, the impact of technological and organisational innovation on employment partly depends on the capabilities of firms and nations to initiate institutional learning, regarding bargaining, managerial and rationing transactions.     

Unemployment,Vacancies and Unfair Dismissals

In most West European economies the annual number of grievance procedures settling individual complaints against unfair dismissals has been increasing since the 1960s. This development has very often been attributed to the enactment of legal regulations restricting the dismissal behaviour of firms. Econometric analyses using data from Germany and Great Britain show that labour market developments, namely the flow into unemployment and the vacancy rate, have a much stronger influence on the cyclical demand for grievance procedures than changes in the “legal infrastructure” of the labour market. Without denying the importance of institutional differences it appears that the individual costs of unemployment (which, ceteris paribus, rise as the flow into unemployment increases and the vacancy rate decreases) are superior predictors of the demand for grievance procedures than institutional changes strengthening or weakening employees' rights.     

Matching Inefficiencies,Regional Disparities,and Unemployment

Abstract. In this paper we apply a stochastic frontier approach to examine how matching inefficiencies and regional disparities in structural factors contribute to regional and aggregate unemployment. Our results suggest that there would be a substantial decline in aggregate unemployment if (i) all local labour offices operated with full efficiency or (ii) they shared the same structure of job seekers and vacant jobs as the most favourable office. In the former case an increase in hirings would lower the average unemployment rate by 2.4 percentage points. In the latter case the decrease would be 1.4 percentage points. Further, we find that fixed effects are positively correlated with both a more favourable structure and higher efficiency. This suggests that the fixed effects may capture some part of time‐invariant features in the structure and inefficiency. Thus, the role of structural factors and inefficiency in regional unemployment disparities may be higher than estimated.     

Firing Costs,Efficiency Wages and Unemployment

This paper uses a Shapiro–Stiglitz efficiency wage model to analyse the effects of firing costs on wages, employment, expected utility and profits. It considers that the probability of a non–shirker being fired depends on an exogenous shock which follows a two–state Markov process. It finds that higher severance payments give rise to lower wages, a lower unemployment rate, an increase in firms’ profits and a decrease in the utility of both workers and the unemployed. These conclusions derive from the finding that a greater probability of keeping one’s job, because of higher firing costs, raises the value of the job and reduces the worker’s incentives to behave opportunistically; this enables firms to reduce wages. Hence, if firms pay efficiency wages, a higher degree of labour market flexibility increases unemployment.     

Equilibrium Labor Turnover,Firm Growth,and Unemployment

This paper considers equilibrium quit turnover in a frictional labor market with costly hiring by firms, where large firms employ many workers and face both aggregate and firm specific productivity shocks. There is exogenous firm turnover as new (small) startups enter the market over time, while some existing firms fail and exit. Individual firm growth rates are disperse and evolve stochastically. The paper highlights how dynamic monopsony, where firms trade off lower wages against higher (endogenous) employee quit rates, yields excessive job‐to‐job quits. Such quits directly crowd out the reemployment prospects of the unemployed. With finite firm productivity states, stochastic equilibrium is fully tractable and can be computed using standard numerical techniques.     

Uncertainty and Unemployment

This paper studies the impact of time‐varying idiosyncratic risk at the establishment level on unemployment fluctuations over 1972–2009. I build a tractable directed search model with firm dynamics and time‐varying idiosyncratic volatility. The model allows for endogenous separations, entry and exit, and job‐to‐job transitions. I show that the model can replicate salient features of the microeconomic behavior of firms and that the introduction of volatility improves the fit of the model for standard business cycle moments. In a series of counterfactual experiments, I show that time‐varying risk is important to account for the magnitude of fluctuations in aggregate unemployment for past U.S. recessions. Though the model can account for about 40% of the total increase in unemployment for the 2007–2009 recession, uncertainty alone is not sufficient to explain the magnitude and persistence of unemployment during that episode.     

政府失业治理、劳动力成本与企业盈余管理

劳动力成本上升带来的失业增加和企业盈利下降是中国当前经济转型和结构调整中亟待解决的重大现实问题,也为盈余管理研究提供了新的视角。考察劳动力成本上升对企业盈余管理行为的影响,并结合中国政府失业治理的制度背景分析其影响机理,可以拓展关于劳动力成本上升经济后果的研究,还可为研究盈余管理的新动机和新特征提供新兴市场国家的经验证据。利用2003年至2013年中国A股上市公司样本,以职工平均工资作为劳动力成本的衡量指标,利用修正的Jones模型对盈余管理水平进行估计,并分别采用普通最小二乘法、面板固定效应回归和两阶段最小二乘回归检验劳动力成本上升对企业盈余管理行为的影响。同时,采用一系列稳健性检验以保证研究结论的可靠性。为了刻画劳动力成本上升背景下政府失业治理与企业财务政策选择交互作用的完整过程逻辑,对因果关系的机制进行系统的探索。研究结果表明,劳动力成本上升时,企业更倾向选择负向盈余管理隐瞒利润或报告亏损,这种影响在国有企业、劳动密集型企业、高失业率地区的企业中更为显著。进一步研究发现,劳动力成本上升导致就业减少和失业增加,在政府承担失业治理任务的背景下,企业通过负向盈余管理可以获得更多政府就业补贴、税收优惠或减少政府转移的就业负担,这在一定程度上弱化了政府失业治理的政策效应。研究结果对于改革政府失业治理模式、规范企业盈余管理行为、完善政府补贴政策、提高政府公共资源配置效率具有重要意义。建议改革行政干预导向下的政府失业治理模式,改变政府就业补助资金的投向和分配方式,优化政府补贴和税收优惠政策,充分发挥市场机制在公共资源配置中的决定性作用,从而缓解地方政府行为对于企业财务会计政策的扭曲。     

Immigration Policy,Equilibrium Unemployment,and Underinvestment in Human Capital

We analyse the impact of different immigration policies on human capital investment in a search‐theoretic model. This class of models features unemployment and underinvestment in human capital. The underinvestment in human capital can be solved by combining immigration policy with appropriate education subsidies. Extending the model with respect to different skill groups allows to analyse the observed bimodal skilled immigration of the USA.     

Unemployment and Business Cycles

We develop and estimate a general equilibrium search and matching model that accounts for key business cycle properties of macroeconomic aggregates, including labor market variables. In sharp contrast to leading New Keynesian models, we do not impose wage inertia. Instead we derive wage inertia from our specification of how firms and workers negotiate wages. Our model outperforms a variant of the standard New Keynesian Calvo sticky wage model. According to our estimated model, there is a critical interaction between the degree of price stickiness, monetary policy, and the duration of an increase in unemployment benefits.     

Search and Rest Unemployment

This paper develops a tractable version of the Lucas and Prescott (1974) search model. Each of a continuum of industries produces a heterogeneous good using a production technology that is continually hit by idiosyncratic shocks. In response to adverse shocks, some workers search for new industries while others are rest unemployed, waiting for their industry's condition to improve. We obtain closed‐form expressions for key aggregate variables and use them to evaluate the model's quantitative predictions for unemployment and wages. Both search and rest unemployment are important for understanding the behavior of wages at the industry level.     

Unemployment and Endogenous Growth

In this paper we develop a two-sector endogenous growth model with a dual labour market, based on efficiency wages. Growth is driven by intentional R&D performed in the high-tech and high-wage sector. How a change in rivalry among firms affects simultaneously growth and unemployment is examined. On the one hand, an increase of the elasticity of substitution between the product varieties of different high-tech firms reduces market power and leads to higher growth but reduces job prospects. On the other hand, if barriers to entry exist, an increase of the number of rivals in the market (due to removal of entry barriers) leads to lower growth, whereas the effect on aggregate employment is ambiguous.     

Heterogeneity and Unemployment Duration

ABSTRACT: Various unemployment duration models are estimated on a large Norwegian dataset covering labour market history 1.1.1989-31.12.1992 for all persons who became unemployed during October 1990. As many unemployed leave the unemployment register without going directly to a job, two alternative definitions of unemployment are used — register unemployment and joblessness. The problem of heterogeneity is addressed both by partitioning the individuals into four categories by previous unemployment history, and by including a random term in the job hazard. Observed as well as unobserved heterogeneity affects the estimates of expected duration to a great extent. When gamma-distributed unobserved heterogeneity is accounted for, the estimates of duration dependence become more positive relative to models where unobserved heterogeneity is ignored. Among persons who are entitled to unemployment benefit, the duration dependence appears to be significantly positive. Alternative specifications of the baseline hazard hardly affect estimates of the effects of the covariates on duration.     

Unemployment Insurance and Entrepreneurship

Based on administrative registers from Norway, we examine how unemployment insurance (UI) and active labor market programs (ALMP) affect the transition rates from unemployment to regular employment and entrepreneurship, as well as subsequent earnings levels. We find that both the employment and entrepreneurship hazards rise sharply in response to UI sanctions and UI exhaustion. On average, transitions to entrepreneurship are more profitable than transitions to regular employment. While employment transitions are highly pro‐cyclical, entrepreneurship transitions are weakly counter‐cyclical. ALMPs targeted at entrepreneurship are rare in Norway, but the few start‐up subsidies that are provided are successful in terms of generating paid work.     

Unemployment Insurance and Underemployment

Should unemployment insurance (UI) systems provide coverage for underemployed job seekers? Based on a statistical analysis of Norwegian unemployment spells, we conclude that the answer to this question is yes. Allowing insured job seekers to retain partial UI benefits during periods of insufficient part‐time work not only reduces UI expenditures during the part‐time work period, but it also unambiguously reduces the time until a regular self‐supporting job is found. Probable explanations are that even small temporary part‐time jobs provide access to useful vacancy information and that such jobs are used by employers as a screening device when hiring from the unemployment pool.     

股权分割、公司业绩与投资者保护

本文首先回顾了股权分割与公司业绩的相关文献 ,发现并没有一致的实证依据证明股权分割损害了上市公司的业绩。在此基础上 ,我们构建了一个更为广泛的上市公司1995～2001年的面板数据样本 ,对上市公司股权分割与公司业绩的关系以及公司上市后的业绩变迁进行了实证的研究 ,结果发现:(1)公司的业绩与非流通股 (国家股、法人股 )比例呈显著的U形关系 ,非流通股独大或独小并没有对公司业绩产生不利影响 ,相反适度混合的股权结构对公司业绩是最不利的;(2)上市公司在上市后的经营业绩整体呈逐年加速下滑趋势 ,而股权分割的差异对该趋势无显著的影响。我们认为 ,把股权分割当成是中国股市问题的核心是具有误导性的 ,私有产权和全流通并不能消除股票市场的委托代理问题。我国股票市场问题的关键在于缺乏有效的投资者保护机制 ,无法对政府、大股东和管理层的剥削行为进行约束 ,导致市场诚信的丧失。在制度性缺失的环境中 ,不同性质的公司控制者的行为方式不会有本质上的差异。我们认为股权问题的解决必须以投资者保护为基础 ,在我国大陆法系的架构下 ,当务之急是推动立法保护私有产权的合法权益 ,并通过引入“集体诉讼”和“辩方举证”机制加强投资者保护的效率     

Wages and Unemployment in Italy,a Long Term Perspective

ABSTRACT: This paper traces a long-term perspective of the relationship between wages and unemployment in the Italian economy from the end of the fifties to the mid-eighties. During this period, the rate of unemployment exhibited three distinct time profiles. After a cyclical episode from around 1958 to the mid-sixties, the unemployment rates changed very little for a decade, showing only mild fluctuations until 1975. Since then, unemployment has been increasing steadily, and in 1987 it exceeded 12|X% of the labour force. The aim of this paper is not to provide a new interpretation of facts, but rather to assess whether, and when, wage pressure has represented a significant factor in the evolution of unemployment. The main conclusion of the paper is that the considerable rise in unemployment observed since the mid-70s is part of a long term evolution, and that in the long-run wages are not exogenous. Though there have been periods of exogenous wage push temporarily affecting unemployment, the argument that the continuous rise in unemployment depends on inappropriate real wages has no empirical content.     

Job Losses,Unemployment Duration and New Jobs in Spain

Abstract. This article focuses on workers who permanently lost their jobs for involuntary reasons in Spain. We use a 1985 representative survey of the Spanish labor force containing retrospective questions related to workers' mobility. We evaluate several characteristics of job losers, as compared to other unemployed workers with experience by the end of 1985. Thereafter, an analysis of job losses addresses the following questions: (1) What types of jobs were lost? (2) How did workers perform after their job loss? (3) How long have they been out of work? (4) What are the characteristics of the new jobs found?     

Sectoral Employment Shifts and Unemployment

ABSTRACT: This paper provides additional insight on the Lilien 1982 sectoral shift hypothesis (Lilien (1983),Abraham and Katz (1986),Samson (1986),Neelin (1987)) by applying it to Swedish data.Lilien claimed that part of the cyclical variation in unemployment is caused by structural shifts in sectoral employment demand. We find some evidence in favour of Lilien‘s notion. Greater sectoral shocks partly result in higher unemployment in Sweden. When extending the sectoral shift approach, controlling for labour market support, the evidence in favour of the sectoral shift hypothesis is weaker.