Inside the perpetual-motion machine: cross-country comparable evidence on job and worker flows at the industry and firm level -super-†

Andrea Bassanini

Industrial and Corporate Change, 2010, vol. 19, issue 6, 2097-2134

Abstract: Many studies suggest that idiosyncratic firm-level characteristics shape both job and worker flows in a similar way in all countries. Others argue that cross-country differences in terms of gross job flows are minor. However, these statements are usually based on the comparison of national estimates, typically collected on the basis of different definitions and collection protocols. In contrast, in this article, we use cross-country comparable data on both job and worker flows to examine key determinants of these flows and of their cross-country differences. We find that idiosyncratic firm characteristics (industry, age, and size) play an important role for both gross job and worker flows in all countries. Nevertheless, in contrast with part of the literature, we find that, even controlling for these idiosyncratic factors, cross-country differences concerning both gross job and worker flows appear large and of a similar magnitude. Both job and worker flows in countries such as the USA and the UK exceed those in certain continental European countries by a factor of two. Moreover, the variation of worker flows across different dimensions is well explained by the variation of job flows. Consistently, churning flows, that is flows originating by firms churning workers and employees quitting and being replaced, display much less variation across countries. Copyright 2010 The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtq061 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:indcch:v:19:y:2010:i:6:p:2097-2134

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial and Corporate Change is currently edited by Josef Chytry

More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().