Labor Contracts and Flexibility: Evidence from a Labor Market Reform in Spain

This paper evaluates the effects on employment, job turnover and productivity of a labor market reform in Spain that eliminated dismissal costs for fixed-term or temporary contracts. Our empirical results are based on a panel of 2356 Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1982-1993. We postulate and estimate a dynamic labor demand model with indefinite and fixed-term labor contracts, and a general structure of labor adjustment costs. Experiments using the estimated model show important positive effects of the reform on total employment (i.e., a 3.5% increase) and job turnover. There is a strong substitution of permanent by temporary workers (i.e., a 10% decline in permanent employment). The effects on labor productivity and the value of a firm are very small. These effects contrast with the ones of a counterfactual reform consisting in halving firing costs of all type of contracts. That policy implies the same increase in total employment, but much larger improvements in productivity, and the value of firms.Labor demand, Firing costs, Temporary contracts, Estimation of dynamic structural models

Labor contracts and flexibility : evidence from a labor market reform in Spain

This paper evaluates the effects of a labor market reform in Spain that removed restrictions on fixed-term or temporary contracts. Our empirical results are based on longitudinal firm-level data that covers observations before and after the reform. We posit and estimate a dynamic labor demand model with indefinite and fixed-term labor contracts, and a general structure of labor adjustment costs. Experiments using the estimated model show important positive effects of the reform on total employment (i.e., a 3.5% increase) and job turnover. There is a strong substitution of permanent by temporary workers (i.e., a 10% decline in permanent employment). The effects on labor productivity and the value of firms are very small. In contrast, a counterfactual reform that halved all firing costs would produce the same employment increase as the actual reform, but much larger improvements in productivity and in the value of firms.Labor demand, Firing costs, Temporary contracts, Estimation of dynamic structural models,

Corporate diversification and R&D intensity dynamics

We study the dynamic bidirectional relationship between firm R&D intensity and corporate diversification, using longitudinal data of Spanish manufacturing companies. Our empirical approach takes into account the censored nature of the dependent variables and the existence of firm-specific unobserved heterogeneity. Whereas we find a positive linear effect of R&D intensity on related diversification, the evidence about the effect of related diversification on R&D intensity takes the form of an inverted U. Hence, the effect of related diversification on R&D intensity is positive but marginally decreasing for moderate levels of related diversification, but such effect can turn out negative for high levels of related diversification. Additionally, the consequences of the dynamic relation are that the effects are substantially larger in the long-run than in the short-run.

Wage expectations for higher education students in Spain

We use data on expected wages self-reported by college students to assess the hypothesis that the positive gap between expected and actual wages would decrease as students approach graduation. Our estimation results confirm this hypothesis. The amount and the quality of student information, used to forecast wages, improves with student experience. We find that expected wages for first-year students are affected not only by the degree type and academic performance, but also by the variables determining their degree preferences and their household environment. In the case of junior students, the degree type and length affects expected wages, though neither pre-university performance nor household environment influence their wage forecasts.Wage differentials, College choice, Ordered response

Converging to efficiency : the Ramón y Cajal Program experience

We analyze the evolution on the design of a policy measure promoted by the Spanish Government: the Ramón y Cajal Program. In the first calls of the Program, an eligibility requirement for a researcher was a preacceptance from at least one Spanish research institution. This requirement was removed in the fourth call. We model the recruiting process as a twosided matching model to find the reason for the new design. We model the situation as if research centers decided by majority to play either the old or the new mechanism. Our results prove that in a repeated game and assuming that research personnel is scarce, even endogamic centers will prefer the new mechanism after a finite number of calls. We also analyze application data for the first five calls, finding empirical support to our assumptions and theoretical findings.

Employment Occupational Structure, Technological Capital and Reorganization of Production

This paper analyzes the role of skill-biased technological progress on the recent changes in the occupation al structure of Spanish manufacturing employment. Our dataset consists of a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms during the period 1986-1991. We confirm a puzzle that has been found in other OECD countries: investment in capital inputs is clearly procyclical, but destruction of unskilled jobs and creation of skilled jobs have been concentrated during the recession. However, we also find that the number of firms who invest by first time in technological capital has been clearly countercyclical. Based on this evidence, we estimate a dynanllc model where firms take discrete decisions about what labor and capital inputs to use, and continuous decisions on the amount of each selected input. Afier controlling for individual heterogeneity and seIf..selection we find that these two decisions have different effects on occupational structure. In particular, we find that for new innovative firms the introduction of technological capital has significant and sizeable effects on the occupational structure ofemployment

Evaluating Labor Market Reforms: A General Equilibrium Approach

fixed-term contracts, firing costs, general equilibrium, heterogeneous agents

Evaluating Labor Market Reforms: A General Equilibrium Approach

Job security provisions are commonly invoked to explain the high and persistent European unemployment rates. This belief has led several countries to reform their labor markets and liberalize the use of fixed-term contracts. Despite how common such contracts have become after deregulation, there is a lack of quantitative analysis of their impact on the economy. To fill this gap, we build a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and firing costs in the tradition of Hopenhayn and Rogerson (1993). We calibrate our model to Spanish data, choosing in part parameters estimated with firm-level longitudinal data. Spain is particularly interesting, since its labor regulations are among the most protective in the OECD, and both its unemployment and its share of fixed-term employment are the highest. We find that fixedterm contracts increase unemployment, reduce output, and raise productivity. The welfare effects are ambiguous