Last in, first out?: Estimating the effect of seniority rules in Sweden

David von Below and Peter Skogman Thoursie ()

Labour Economics, 2010, vol. 17, issue 6, 987-997

Abstract: In this paper we investigate whether a relaxation in seniority rules (the "last-in-first-out" principle) had any effect on firms' employment behaviour. Seniority rules exist in several countries, but consequences of seniority rules on firms' employment behaviour have not been examined previously. The "last-in-first-out" principle in Sweden was reformed in January 2001 such that employers with ten or fewer employees were allowed to exempt two workers from the seniority rule. Using an employer-employee unbalanced panel data for the period 1996-2005, we find that both hires and separations increased in small firms relative to large firms by 5%. This also implies that there were no effects on firms' net employment. Our results show that firms reacted to changes in the seniority rules, but we argue that the effects are not overwhelmingly large.

Keywords: Employment; protection; Employment; change; Hires; Separations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927-5371(10)00029-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Last in, first out? Estimating the effect of seniority rules in Sweden (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:17:y:2010:i:6:p:987-997

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().