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On The Sources And Size Of Employment Adjustment Costs

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Author Info
Lucia Foster

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Abstract

Micro employment adjustment costs affect not only establishment-level dynamics but can also affect aggregate employment dynamics. The difficulties in directly observing and measuring these adjustment costs necessitate an indirect approach in order to learn more about the sources and size of these costs. This paper examines differences in employment adjustments by worker and establishment characteristics using micro-level data for approximately 11,000 U.S. manufacturing plants. Differences in the speed of adjustment within the organizing framework of the traditional partial adjustment model are used to identify the source and size of employment adjustment costs. The estimates are undertaken using three different techniques and under a variety of assumptions concerning market structure, worker heterogeneity, and degree of interrelation of inputs. The estimates show that employment adjustment speeds differ over worker and establishment characteristics in a manner that is consistent with the underlying adjustment cost stories. These differences suggest that systematic changes in the distribution of establishments over these characteristics can influence aggregate employment dynamics in response to a shock through compositional effects.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau in its series Working Papers with number 99-7.

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Date of creation: May 1999
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Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:99-7

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Keywords: CES economic research micro data microdata chief economist

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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.:
  1. 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 115-37, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Caballero, Ricardo J & Engel, Eduardo M R A, 1993. "Microeconomic Adjustment Hazards and Aggregate Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 108(2), pages 359-83, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Eric J. Bartelsman & Wayne Gray, 1996. "The NBER Manufacturing Productivity Database," NBER Technical Working Papers 0205, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Abraham, Katharine G. & Houseman, Susan N., 1989. "Job security and work force adjustment: How different are U.S. and Japanese practices?," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 500-521, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Berman, Eli & Bound, John & Griliches, Zvi, 1994. "Changes in the Demand for Skilled Labor within U.S. Manufacturing: Evidence from the Annual Survey of Manufactures," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 109(2), pages 367-97, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. James D Adams & Adam B Jaffe, 1994. "The Span of the Effect of R&D in the Firm and Industry," Working Papers 94-7, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau. [Downloadable!]
  7. Bresson, G & Kramarz, F & Sevestre, P, 1992. "Heterogeneous Labor and the Dynamics of Aggregate Labor Demand: Some Estimations Using Panel Data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 153-68.
  8. Beggs, John J. & Nerlove, Marc, 1988. "Biases in dynamic models with fixed effects," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 29-31. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Bergstrom, Villy & Panas, Epaminondas E, 1992. "How Robust Is the Capital-Skill Complementarity Hypothesis?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(3), pages 540-46, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Anderson, T. W. & Hsiao, Cheng, 1982. "Formulation and estimation of dynamic models using panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 47-82, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Lucia Foster, 1999. "Employment Adjustment Costs and Establishment Characteristics," Working Papers 99-15, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau. [Downloadable!]
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