Suchergebnisse

This paper explores the prisoner's dilemma that may result when workers and firms are involved in labour disputes and must decide whether to hire a lawyer to be represented at trial. Using a representative data set of labour disputes in the UK and a large population of French unfair dismissal cases, we find that a lawyer substantially increases the firm's probability of winning at trial but has little effect on the worker's victory probability. The UK data contain award and litigation costs and allow us to compute the pay-off matrix. We do not find evidence of a prisoner's dilemma, given that the total pay-off for the worker is not significantly different whether she is represented or not. Surprisingly, the dominant strategy for the firm is not to be represented.

Résumé Cet article étudie l'évolution de la distribution des salaires en France de 1990 à 2008. Nous isolons l'effet des variations de la probabilité d'emploi et de la qualification de l'effet des changements du prix du travail. Contrairement à d'autres pays développés, les inégalités à la fois dans le bas et dans le haut de la distribution entre le premier et le dernier décile reculent chez les hommes et les femmes. La période récente peut ainsi être qualifiée de période de « grande compression » salariale entre le premier et le dernier décile. La baisse des rendements de l'éducation et de l'expérience sur la période a produit une structure des salaires en 2008 parmi la plus égalitaire jamais observée en France depuis les années 1960.

About one in four workers challenges her dismissal in front of a labor court in France. Using a data set of individual labor disputes brought to French courts over the years 1996 to 2003, we examine the impact of labor court activity on labor market flows. First, we present a simple theoretical model showing the links between judicial costs and judicial case outcomes. Second, we exploit our model as well as the French institutional setting to generate instruments for these endogenous outcomes. In particular, we use shocks in the supply of lawyers who resettle close to their university of origin. Using these instruments, we show that labor court decisions have a causal effect on labor flows. More trials and more cases won by the workers cause more job destructions. More settlements, higher filing rates, and a larger fraction of workers represented by a lawyer dampen job destructions. Various robustness checks confirm these findings.

Using a unique and comprehensive data set on the two largest economies of the Eurozone - France and Germany - this paper first proceeds to a computation of the Gordy formula relaxing the ad hoc sizedependent constraints of the Basel formulas. Our study contributes to Article 501 of the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) requesting analysis of the consistency of own funds requirements with the riskiness of SME. In both the French and the German sample, results suggest that the relative differences between the capital requirements for large corporates and those for SME (in other words the capital relief for SME) are lower in the Basel III framework than implied by empirically estimated asset correlations. Results show that the SME Supporting Factor in the CRR/CRD IV is able to compensate the difference between estimated and CRR/CRD IV capital requirements for loans in the corporate portfolio. However, no empirical evidence is found supporting the € 1.5 mln SME threshold currently included in Article 501 (CRR).