This study examines the costs firms face in adjusting labor demand to exogenous shocks. Evidence on monthly plant-level data shows that adjustment proceeds in jumps: employment is unchanged in response to small shocks, but moves instantaneously to a new equilibrium if the shocks are large. Results in the large literature that assumes smooth adjustment are due to aggregation of this nonlinear relation. The finding has implications for cyclical changes in productivity; for severance pay, layoff, and plant-closing restrictions; and for all other policies that affect the cost of adjusting employment. Copyright 1989 by American Economic Association.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 79 (1989) Issue (Month): 4 (September) Pages: 674-89 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Hamermesh, Daniel S., 1987.
"The demand for labor in the long run,"
Handbook of Labor Economics,
in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 429-471
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.