Assessing Job Flows Across Countries: The Role of Industry, Firm Size and Regulations

John Haltiwanger, Stefano Scarpetta and Helena Schweiger

No 13920, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper analyzes job flows in a sample of 16 industrial and emerging economies over the past decade, exploiting a harmonized firm-level dataset. It shows that industry and firm size effects (and especially firm size) account for a large fraction in the overall variability in job flows. However, large residual differences remain in the job flow patterns across countries. To account for the latter, the paper explores the role of differences in employment protection legislation across countries. Using a difference-in-difference approach that minimizes possible endogeneity and omitted variable problems, our findings show that hiring and firing costs tend to curb job flows, particularly in those industries and firm size classes that require more frequent labor adjustment.

JEL-codes: J23 J53 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-lab, nep-law and nep-reg
Note: EFG LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (87)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Assessing Job Flows across Countries: The Role of Industry, Firm Size and Regulations (2006)
Working Paper: Assessing job flows across countries: the role of industry, firm size, and regulations (2006)
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