The perverse effects of partial employment protection reform: experience rating and french old workers

Luc Behaghel, Bruno Crépon and Béatrice Sédillot ()

Research Unit Working Papers from Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquee, INRA

Abstract: French firms laying off workers aged 50 and above have to pay a tax to the unemployment insurance system, known as the Delalande tax. This is a rare case of experience rating in the European context. We evaluate its impact on layoffs as well as on hiring, taking advantage of several changes in the measure since its introduction in 1987. A legislative change in 1992 exempted firms from the tax for workers who were hired after age 50. Following this change, the transition rate from unemployment to employment increased significantly for workers over 50 compared to workers less than 50. The difference is sizeable: between one third and one half of the initial transition rate. Evidence on the effect on layoffs is less clear cut. The impact is sizeable only for the most stringent tax schedule, after 1998.

Keywords: Experience rating; employment protection; old workers; layoff; hiring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J63 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2006-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inra.fr/Internet/Departements/ESR/UR/lea/documents/wp/wp0608.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The perverse effects of partial employment protection reform: The case of French older workers (2008)
Working Paper: The Perverse Effects of Partial Employment Protection Reform: Experience Rating and French Older Workers (2005)
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:lea:leawpi:0608

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Unit Working Papers from Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquee, INRA INRA-LEA, 48, Boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, France.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Madeleine Roux ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).