Rational Expectations and the Puzzling No-Effect of the Minimum Wage

This paper argues that expectations are an important element that need to be included into the analysis of the effects of the minimum wage on employment. We show in a standard matching model that these effects are higher the lower is the likelihood associated to the minimum wage variation. This property also helps explaining the controversial results found in the empirical literature. When the policy is anticipated, the observed effect at the time of the actual variation is small and hard to identify. The model is tested on Spanish data, taking advantage of the unexpected change in the minimum wage following the election of Zapatero in 2004.Minimum wage, Expectations, Heterogeneous matches

Employment Protection and Labor Productivity: Positive or Negative?

Since the 1980s, many European countries have implemented labor market reforms, introducing more flexible labor contracts. This paper develops a matching model with heterogeneous matches in order to analyse the impact of employment protection on labor productivity. Several channels affects productivity. On one hand, flexible contracts reduce mismatching: low productive jobs are destroyed at no cost with a positive impact on the overall productivity. On the other hand, they imply lower human capital investment, reducing labor productivity. We analyze a third channel: the selection of the employees. Low costs of dismissal reduce the incentive of firms to invest in screening applicants, therefore increasing the uncertainty about their unobserved skills and productivity.Employment protection, Stochastic.job matching model, Screening

Screening ex-ante or screening on-the-job? The impact of the employment contract

This paper studies how employers collect information about the quality of workers. Two are the strategies: screening ex-ante, through the recruitment process, and monitoring new hires at work, or screening on-the-job. Using two datasets representative of workers in Great Britain, we provide empirical evidence that the optimal choice is related to the type of employment contract offered by the .rm. Our estimates show that temporary workers are associated with lower recruitment effort - in terms of lower cost and higher speed - and closer monitoring than permanent employees. But this relation depends crucially on the type of jobs. Differences in screening effort are substantial for low-level occupations, while the gap is marginal or not significant for high-skilled jobs.Fixed-term contracts, Recruitment, Monitoring

Rational Expectations and the Puzzling No-Effect of the Minimum Wage

This paper argues that expectations are an important element that needs to be included into the analysis of the effects of the minimum wage on employment. We show in a standard matching model that the observed employment effect is higher the lower is the likelihood associated with the minimum wage variation. On the other side, there is a significant anticipation effect, ignored in the literature. This property is able to explain the controversial results found in the empirical studies. When the policy is anticipated, the effect at the time of the actual variation is small and potentially hard to identify. The model is tested on Spanish data, taking advantage of the unexpected change in the minimum wage following the election of Zapatero in 2004.minimum wage, expectations, heterogeneous matches

Employment Protection and Labor Productivity: Positive or Negative?

Since the 1980s, many European countries have implemented labor market reforms, introducing more flexible labor contracts. This paper develops a matching model with heterogeneous matches in order to analyse the impact of employment protection on labor productivity. Several channels affects productivity. On one hand, flexible contracts reduce mismatching: low productive jobs are destroyed at no cost with a positive impact on the overall productivity. On the other hand, they imply lower human capital investment, reducing labor productivity. We analyze a third channel: the selection of the employees. Low costs of dismissal reduce the incentive of firms to invest in screening applicants, therefore increasing the uncertainty about their unobserved skills and productivity

Screening ex-ante or screening on-the-job? The impact of the employment contract

This paper studies how employers collect information about the quality of workers. Two are the strategies: screening ex-ante, through the recruitment process, and monitoring new hires at work, or screening on-the-job. Using two datasets representative of workers in Great Britain, we provide empirical evidence that the optimal choice is related to the type of employment contract offered by the .rm. Our estimates show that temporary workers are associated with lower recruitment effort - in terms of lower cost and higher speed - and closer monitoring than permanent employees. But this relation depends crucially on the type of jobs. Differences in screening effort are substantial for low-level occupations, while the gap is marginal or not significant for high-skilled jobs

Employment Protection and Labor Productivity: Positive or Negative?

Since the 1980s, many European countries have implemented labor market reforms, introducing more flexible labor contracts. This paper develops a matching model with heterogeneous matches in order to analyse the impact of employment protection on labor productivity. Several channels affects productivity. On one hand, flexible contracts reduce mismatching: low productive jobs are destroyed at no cost with a positive impact on the overall productivity. On the other hand, they imply lower human capital investment, reducing labor productivity. We analyze a third channel: the selection of the employees. Low costs of dismissal reduce the incentive of firms to invest in screening applicants, therefore increasing the uncertainty about their unobserved skills and productivity

Rational Expectations and the Puzzling No-Effect of the Minimum Wage

This paper argues that expectations are an important element that need to be included into the analysis of the effects of the minimum wage on employment. We show in a standard matching model that these effects are higher the lower is the likelihood associated to the minimum wage variation. This property also helps explaining the controversial results found in the empirical literature. When the policy is anticipated, the observed effect at the time of the actual variation is small and hard to identify. The model is tested on Spanish data, taking advantage of the unexpected change in the minimum wage following the election of Zapatero in 2004