The Employment Effects of Severance Payments with Wage Rigidities

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The Employment Effects of Severance Payments with Wage Rigidities

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Garibaldi, Pietro
Violante, Giovanni L

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Abstract

Firing costs due to employment protection legislation have two separate dimensions: a transfer from the firm to the worker to be laid off and a tax paid outside the firm-worker pair. We document that quantitatively transfers are a much larger component than taxes. Nevertheless, to avoid the ‘bonding critique’ most of the existing literature overlooks the transfer component by making the implicit assumption that, in the presence of wage rigidity, mandatory severance payments have the same real effects as firing taxes. This Paper shows, in the context of a search model with insider and outsider workers, that this presumption is in general misplaced: the impact of severance payments on unemployment is qualitatively different from that of firing taxes, and it varies according to the bite of the wage rigidity. When the wage rigidity is endogenously determined by a centralized monopoly union of insiders, severance payments are either neutral or they increase unemployment, depending on the union’s coverage of outsiders’ contracts. This prediction finds empirical support in a panel dataset of OECD countries.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 4608.

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Date of creation: Sep 2004
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4608

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Article
- Pietro Garibaldi & Giovanni L. Violante, 2005. "The Employment Effects of Severance Payments with Wage Rigidities," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(506), pages 799-832, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

Find related papers by JEL classification:
E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution
J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2005-02-13 (All new papers)
NEP-DGE-2005-02-13 (Dynamic General Equilibrium)
NEP-LAB-2005-02-13 (Labour Economics)
NEP-MAC-2005-02-13 (Macroeconomics)

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Winfried Koeniger & Julien Prat, 2007. "Employment Protection, Product Market Regulation and Firm Selection," Working Papers 07-03, Utrecht School of Economics. [Downloadable!]
Other versions:
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- George Alessandria & Alain Delacroix, 2004. "Trade and the (dis)incentive to reform labor markets: the case of reform in the European Union," Working Papers 04-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
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- George Alessandria & Alain Delacroix, 2004. "Trade and the (Dis) Incentive to Reform Labor Markets: The Case of Reform in the European Union," 2004 Meeting Papers 460, Society for Economic Dynamics. [Downloadable!]
- Alessandria, George & Delacroix, Alain, 2008. "Trade and the (dis)incentive to reform labor markets: The case of reform in the European Union," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 151-166, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
L'Haridon, Olivier & Malherbe, Franck, 2008. "Employment protection reform in search economies," Les Cahiers de Recherche 910, HEC Paris. [Downloadable!]
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- Olivier L'Haridon & Franck Malherbet, 2008. "Employment Protection Reform in Search Economies," THEMA Working Papers 2008-26, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise. [Downloadable!]
- L'Haridon, Olivier & Malherbet, Franck, 2009. "Employment protection reform in search economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 255-273, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Héctor Sala & José I. Silva, 2009. "Flexibility at the margin and labour market volatility: The case of Spain," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 33(2), pages 145-178, May. [Downloadable!]
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cipollone piero & Anita Guelfi, 2006. "The value of flexible contracts; evidence from an italian panel of industrial firms," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 583, Bank of Italy, Economic Research Department. [Downloadable!]
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Guiso, Luigi & Pistaferri, Luigi & Schivardi, Fabiano, 2006. "Labour Adjustment: Disentangling Firing and Mobility Costs," CEPR Discussion Papers 5787, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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- Luigi Guiso & Luigi Pistaferri & Fabiano Schivardi, 2007. "Labor Adjustment: Disentangling Firing and Mobility Costs," Economics Working Papers ECO2007/44, European University Institute. [Downloadable!]

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