Labor Adjustment: Disentangling Firing and Mobility Costs

Luigi Guiso (), Luigi Pistaferri and Fabiano Schivardi ()

No ECO2007/44, Economics Working Papers from European University Institute

Abstract: This paper studies the costs of adjusting employment, distinguishing between firms’ firing and workers’ mobility costs. We construct a simple dynamic general equilibrium model of labor demand and supply and show that only the joint response of employment and wages to firm level shocks can discriminate between the two types of costs. We use matched employer-employees data for Italy to estimate the model and find that both types of costs are present, that they are sizeable (in the range of 19,000 euros in total) and that firing costs account for almost 90 percent of total adjustment costs.

Keywords: Adjustment costs; mobility costs; matched employer-employees data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 D21 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dge and nep-lab
Date: 2007

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Related works:
Working Paper: Labour Adjustment: Disentangling Firing and Mobility Costs (2006)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2007/44

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