Suchergebnisse

We study the impact of barriers to entry on workplace training. Our theoretical model indicates that there are two contrasting effects of deregulation on training. With a given number of firms, deregulation reduces the size of rents per unit of output that firms can reap by training their employees. Yet, the number of firms increases, thereby raising output and profit gains from training and improving investment incentives. The latter effect always prevails. Our empirical analysis, based on repeated cross-section data from 15 European countries and 12 industries, confirms the predictions of the model and shows that deregulation increases training incidence.

Empirical evidence of the impact of policy uncertainty on aggregate investment is mixed. However, if the relationship between policy uncertainty and investment performance is nonlinear, linear regression exercises might not capture the effect of policy uncertainty. In this paper, I present a simple model with investment irreversibility which shows that, in the presence of legal constraints on investment in foreign assets, domestic real investment performance is poorer when liberalization reforms are only partially incredible.

web-site: http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/european_economy/2004/eesp304en.pdf ; I use data from the ECHP to assess the effects of adult training on individual labour market performance. Although I find that employee training has a clear impact on wage growth only in the case of young or highly educated employees, it appears to have a stronger impact on employment security in the case of both older and low-educated workers. The contradiction is only apparent since, as standard in the literature, training wage premia are estimated on a censored sample including only employed workers. Due to the existence of downward wage rigidity, one can expect that those workers who are unable to maintain their productivity (due, for instance, to skill obsolescence) are more frequently laid–off and thereby excluded from our sample. Once foregone income due to unemployment spells is taken into account, it can be concluded that training positively affects earnings at any age and level of educational attainment. In spite of these high ex post private return, pervasive market failures justify a pro-active approach to training policy. I argue that co-financing arrangements — under which governments, employers and/or employees jointly finance training — can better leverage the required resources to upgrade the competences of those in employment. Co-financing schemes, if carefully designed, seem to be potentially effective in reducing under-provision of training — both overall and for specific groups — in a way that minimises deadweight losses, although specific programmes for the unemployed or the inactive might require full government funding.

web-site: http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/european_economy/2004/eesp304en.pdf ; I use data from the ECHP to assess the effects of adult training on individual labour market performance. Although I find that employee training has a clear impact on wage growth only in the case of young or highly educated employees, it appears to have a stronger impact on employment security in the case of both older and low-educated workers. The contradiction is only apparent since, as standard in the literature, training wage premia are estimated on a censored sample including only employed workers. Due to the existence of downward wage rigidity, one can expect that those workers who are unable to maintain their productivity (due, for instance, to skill obsolescence) are more frequently laid–off and thereby excluded from our sample. Once foregone income due to unemployment spells is taken into account, it can be concluded that training positively affects earnings at any age and level of educational attainment. In spite of these high ex post private return, pervasive market failures justify a pro-active approach to training policy. I argue that co-financing arrangements — under which governments, employers and/or employees jointly finance training — can better leverage the required resources to upgrade the competences of those in employment. Co-financing schemes, if carefully designed, seem to be potentially effective in reducing under-provision of training — both overall and for specific groups — in a way that minimises deadweight losses, although specific programmes for the unemployed or the inactive might require full government funding.

I examine the effect of labour market policies and institutions on the transmission of macroeconomic shocks to the labour market, using both aggregate and industry-level annual data for 23 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and up to 29 years. I find that high and progressive labour taxes and generous unemployment benefits amplify labour income fluctuations. By contrast, statutory minimum wages reduce the difference in the sensitivity of wages to aggregate shocks between low-wage and high-wage industries. Dismissal regulations are found to mitigate the impact of shocks on both earnings and employment. Moreover, this mitigation effect is greater in industries where firms have a greater propensity to make staffing changes through dismissals.

Exploiting a unique dataset including cross-country comparable hiring and separation rates by type of transition for 24 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and 13 years, we study the effect of dismissal regulations on different types of gross worker flows, defined as one-year transitions. We use both a difference-in-difference approach - in which the impact of regulations is identified by exploiting likely cross-industry differences in their impact - and standard time-series analysis - in which the effect of regulations is identified through regulatory changes over time. We find that the more restrictive the regulation, the smaller is the rate of within-industry job-to-job transitions, in particular towards permanent jobs. By contrast, we find no significant effect as regards separations involving an industry change or persistent joblessness. The extent of reinstatement in the case of unfair dismissal appears to be the most important regulatory determinant of gross worker flows. We also present a large battery of robustness checks that suggest that our findings are robust.