Suchergebnisse

Differential enforcement of employment protection by explicit design of the legislation, for example through exemptions for small firms, has been exploited in a growing body of research. However, little is known about the effects of differential enforcement that is not defined by the letter of the law, presumably due to the lack of data. Our study incorporates aspects of both types of differential enforcement as we combine the evaluation of a partial reform with information on the more difficult-to-observe enforcement of the same reform in collective agreements. We analyse a reform of notice periods for employer-initiated separations in Sweden, which reduced the notice periods for newly hired older workers substantially but implied minor or no changes in the notices for younger workers. The reform was initiated at different times depending on collective agreement. These circumstances provide ample opportunity for the identification of its effects. Our findings indicate heterogeneous effects across collective agreements. Despite differences in terms of dynamics and size, a positive effect on hirings is found for all agreements. In most cases, our results also show an increase in separations, indicating an increase in employment turnover. A salient feature of the results is that the estimated effects increase with the treatment dose, i.e., the size of the reduction in notice periods across different age groups.

We examine the effect of firm profits on wages for individual workers while focusing on the empirical complications associated with estimating the extent of rent-sharing. Controlling for worker and firm fixed-effects and using several instruments to deal with the endogeneity of profits, we report results indicating that OLS-estimates strongly underestimate the effects of profits on wages. Moreover, the effect of profits on wages are estimated separately for firms with increasing and decreasing profits within a given time period. We find a positive and stable effect only in firms with increasing profits. This is in line with the idea that falling profits do not lead to wage cuts while increasing profits imply higher wages.

Abstract
Previous research has found that weak institutions can hamper investment and alter patterns of trade. However, little is known about the impact of institutional quality on offshoring. This lack of knowledge is surprising, given that offshoring has become an important part of many firms' internationalization strategies. This study uses detailed firm-level data for the 1997–2005 period to examine the relationship between institutional quality in 113 source countries and offshoring by Swedish firms. The results suggest that weak institutions are negatively related to offshoring in general and to the offshoring of R&D- and relationship specificity-intensive inputs in particular. An analysis of learning effects suggests that the impact of weak institutions on the offshoring of relationship specificity-intensive inputs vanishes when firms return to countries from which they have previous market experience. Our results are robust to the use of various measures of institutional quality.

This paper examines whether and, if so, why source country heterogeneity exists in foreign direct investment. Using detailed Swedish matched employer‐employee data for the period from 1996 to 2009, we find statistical evidence that affiliate performance differs systematically across source countries. We then show that differences in foreign multinational enterprises' global management practices (estimated from the new firm‐level data from the World Management Survey) are an important determinant of productivity among foreign affiliates.

The increase in foreign direct investments raises concerns about labor market consequences in many countries. It is feared that multinational firms are inclined to shift jobs abroad and increase job volatility. We use firm-level data to examine if multinationality and foreign ownership affect the wage elasticity of labor demand. Unlike previous studies, we distinguish the effect on different skill groups of employees. We find no general difference in wage elasticity between foreign and domestic firms but the wage elasticity is higher in multinational firms than in national firms, in particular for medium-skilled workers.