IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v17y2010i1p27-37.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The shape of hiring and separation costs in France

Author

Listed:
  • Kramarz, Francis
  • Michaud, Marie-Laure

Abstract

In this article, we estimate the structure of costs of hiring, terminating, and retiring employees in France. We use a representative panel data set of French establishments that contains direct measures of these various costs as well as measures of entries and exits for the years 1992 and 1996. First, we show that our panel data source is able to reproduce results obtained by Abowd and Kramarz (2003) when we use the cross-section dimension. Our estimates show that collective terminations are much more expensive than individual terminations: legislation, namely the requirement to set up a "social plan" in case of collective terminations, magnifies firing costs. Collective terminations entail very large fixed costs. Termination costs are essentially linear in the number of terminated workers, with collective terminations being much more expensive. The costs of retirement are concave in the number of retired workers with a fixed cost component which is smaller than the one estimated for terminations, and quite smaller than that obtained by Abowd and Kramarz (2003). Finally, we find that hiring costs are small and seem only present when hiring on CDI; costs of hiring on short-term contracts are almost zero. Finally, the fixed (firm-specific) component of hiring costs is very small.

Suggested Citation

  • Kramarz, Francis & Michaud, Marie-Laure, 2010. "The shape of hiring and separation costs in France," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 27-37, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:17:y:2010:i:1:p:27-37
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927-5371(09)00076-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bertola, Giuseppe, 1990. "Job security, employment and wages," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 851-879, June.
    2. Blanchard, Olivier & Wolfers, Justin, 2000. "The Role of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: The Aggregate Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(462), pages 1-33, March.
    3. Garibaldi, Pietro, 1998. "Job flow dynamics and firing restrictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 245-275, February.
    4. Samuel Bentolila & Giuseppe Bertola, 1990. "Firing Costs and Labour Demand: How Bad is Eurosclerosis?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(3), pages 381-402.
    5. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Gerard A. Pfann, 1996. "Adjustment Costs in Factor Demand," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 1264-1292, September.
    6. John M. Abowd & Patrick Corbel & Francis Kramarz, 1999. "The Entry And Exit Of Workers And The Growth Of Employment: An Analysis Of French Establishments," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(2), pages 170-187, May.
    7. John M. Abowd & Francis Kramarz & David N. Margolis, 1999. "High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 251-334, March.
    8. Bentolila, S. & Saint-Paul, G., 1995. "A model of labour demand with linear adjustment costs," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 105-105, March.
    9. Gerard A. Pfann, 2006. "Downsizing and Heterogeneous Firing Costs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(1), pages 158-170, February.
    10. Nickell, Stephen & Layard, Richard, 1999. "Labor market institutions and economic performance," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 46, pages 3029-3084, Elsevier.
    11. Goux, Dominique & Maurin, Eric & Pauchet, Marianne, 2001. "Fixed-term contracts and the dynamics of labour demand," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 533-552, March.
    12. Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1989. "Labor Demand and the Structure of Adjustment Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 674-689, September.
    13. Abowd, John M. & Kramarz, Francis, 2003. "The costs of hiring and separations," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 499-530, October.
    14. Caballero, Ricardo J & Engel, Eduardo M R A & Haltiwanger, John, 1997. "Aggregate Employment Dynamics: Building from Microeconomic Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 115-137, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francis Kramarz & Marie-Laure Michaud, 2002. "The Shape of Hiring and Separation Costs," Working Papers 2002-38, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    2. Benoît Pierre FREYENS, 2010. "Measuring firing costs: The case for direct methods," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 149(3), pages 287-313, September.
    3. Lapatinas, Athanasios, 2009. "Labour adjustment costs: Estimation of a dynamic discrete choice model using panel data for Greek manufacturing firms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 521-533, October.
    4. Øivind A. Nilsen & Arvid Raknerud & Marina Rybalka & Terje Skjerpen, 2005. "Lumpy Investments, Factor Adjustments and Productivity," Discussion Papers 441, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    5. Cabo, Francisco & Martín-Román, Ángel L., 2017. "Dynamic collective bargaining. Frictional effects under open-shop industrial relations," MPRA Paper 77562, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Jung, Sven, 2013. "Employment Adjustment in German Firms," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79696, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Nilsen, Oivind A. & Salvanes, Kjell G. & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 2007. "Employment changes, the structure of adjustment costs, and plant size," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 577-598, April.
    8. Ija Trapeznikova, 2017. "Employment Adjustment And Labor Utilization," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58, pages 889-922, August.
    9. Sven Jung, 2014. "Employment adjustment in German firms [Betriebliche Beschäftigungsanpassung in Deutschland]," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 47(1), pages 83-106, March.
    10. Bassanini, Andrea & Garnero, Andrea, 2013. "Dismissal protection and worker flows in OECD countries: Evidence from cross-country/cross-industry data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 25-41.
    11. Blatter, Marc & Muehlemann, Samuel & Schenker, Samuel, 2012. "The costs of hiring skilled workers," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 20-35.
    12. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:2985-3028 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Nilsen, Øivind & Salvanes, Kjell G. & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 2000. "Employment Changes, the Structure of Adjustment Costs, and Firms' Size," 10th International Conference on Panel Data, Berlin, July 5-6, 2002 A1-4, International Conferences on Panel Data.
    14. Abowd, John M. & Kramarz, Francis, 2003. "The costs of hiring and separations," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 499-530, October.
    15. Jung, Sven, 2012. "Employment adjustment in German firms," Discussion Papers 80, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    16. Ahrens, Steffen & Wesselbaum, Dennis, 2009. "On the introduction of firing costs," Kiel Working Papers 1559, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    17. Gonzaga, Gustavo, 2009. "Labor Adjustment Dynamics in Brazilian Manufacturing," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 29(2), December.
    18. Oivind A. Nilsen & Joao M. Ejarque, 2007. "Identifying Adjustment Costs of Net and Gross Employment Changes," 2007 Meeting Papers 670, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Yaman, F., 2016. "Structural Estimation of Labor Adjustment Costs," Working Papers 15/22, Department of Economics, City University London.
    20. James J. Heckman & Carmen Pagés, 2004. "Introduction to "Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin American and the Caribbean"," NBER Chapters, in: Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean, pages 1-108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Francisco Cabo & Angel Martín-Román, 2019. "Dynamic collective bargaining and labor adjustment costs," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 126(2), pages 103-133, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:17:y:2010:i:1:p:27-37. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.