Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Unemployment and Temporary Jobs in the Crisis: Comparing France and Spain

Contents:

Author Info

  • Samuel Bentolila
  • Pierre Cahuc
  • Juan José Dolado
  • Thomas Le Barbanchon, .

Abstract

Our goal here is to explain the strikingly different response of Spanish unemployment relative to other European economies, in particular France, during the ongoing recession. The Spanish unemployment rate, which fell from 22% in 1994 to 8% in 2007, reached 19% by the end of 2009, whereas the French unemployment rate has only increased by less than 2 pp. during the crisis. We argue that labor market institutions in the two economies are rather similar, except for the larger gap between dismissal costs of workers with permanent and temporary contracts in Spain, which lead to huge flows of temporary workers out of and into unemployment. We estimate in a counterfactual scenario that more than one-half of the increase in the unemployment rate would have been avoided had Spain adopted French employment protection institutions before the recession started.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
File URL: http://www.fedea.es/pub/Papers/2010/dt2010-07.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by FEDEA in its series Working Papers with number 2010-07.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Feb 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2010-07

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.fedea.es

Related research

Keywords:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Bassanini, Andrea & Nunziata, Luca & Venn, Danielle, 2008. "Job Protection Legislation and Productivity Growth in OECD Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 3555, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Samuel Bentolila & Juan F. Jimeno, 2003. "Spanish Unemployment: The End of the Wild Ride?," CESifo Working Paper Series 940, CESifo Group Munich.
  3. Bentolila, Samuel & Dolado, Juan J. & Jimeno, Juan Francisco, 2007. "Does Immigration Affect the Phillips Curve? Some Evidence for Spain," CEPR Discussion Papers 6604, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  4. Sala, Hector & Silva, José I. & Toledo, Manuel E., . "Flexibility at the margin and labor market volatility in OECD countries," Open Access publications from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid info:hdl:10016/928, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
  5. Dale T. Mortensen & Christopher A. Pissarides, 1993. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," CEP Discussion Papers dp0110, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  6. Cahuc, Pierre & Postel-Vinay, Fabien, 2001. "Temporary Jobs, Employment Protection and Labor Market Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 260, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  7. Bentolila, Samuel & Cahuc, Pierre & Dolado, Juan José & Le Barbanchon, Thomas, 2010. "Two-Tier Labor Markets in the Great Recession: France vs. Spain," IZA Discussion Papers 5340, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  8. 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.
  9. Pierre Cahuc & Stéphane Carcillo, 2006. "The Shortcomings of a Partial Release of Employment Protection Laws: The Case of the 2005 French Reform," IMF Working Papers 06/301, International Monetary Fund.
  10. Andrea Ichino & Regina T. Riphahn, 2001. "The Effect of Employment Protection on Worker Effort. A Comparison of Absenteeism During and After Probation," CESifo Working Paper Series 596, CESifo Group Munich.
  11. Bentolila, Samuel & Saint-Paul, Gilles, 1992. "The macroeconomic impact of flexible labor contracts, with an application to Spain," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 1013-1047, June.
  12. Kramarz, Francis & Philippon, Thomas, 2001. "The impact of differential payroll tax subsidies on minimum wage employment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 115-146, October.
  13. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Landier, Augustin, 2002. "The Perverse Effects of Partial Labor Market Reform: Fixed Duration Contracts in France," Open Access publications from University of Toulouse 1 Capitole http://neeo.univ-tlse1.fr, University of Toulouse 1 Capitole.
  14. Samuel Bentolila & Juan Jose Dolado & Juan F. Jimeno, 2008. "Two-tier Employment Protection Reforms: The Spanish Experience," CESifo DICE Report, Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 6(4), pages 49-56, December.
  15. Malcomson, James M., 1999. "Individual employment contracts," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 35, pages 2291-2372 Elsevier.
  16. Lars Ljungqvist, 2002. "How Do Lay--off Costs Affect Employment?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(482), pages 829-853, October.
  17. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 2000. "The Political Economy of Labour Market Institutions," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198293323.
  18. Yolanda Rebollo Sanz & J. Ignacio García-Pérez, 2009. "Do wage subsidies affect the subsequent employment stability of permanent workers?: the case of Spain," Working Papers 09.18, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Philip, Jung & Moritz, Kuhn, 2011. "The Era of the U.S.-Europe Labor Market Divide: What can we learn?," MPRA Paper 32322, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Givord, Pauline, 2011. "Essay on Four Issues in Public Policy Evaluation," Open Access publications from Sciences Po info:hdl:2441/53r60a8s3ku, Sciences Po.
  3. García-Mainar , Inmaculada & Montuenga-Gómez , Víctor M., 2012. "Wage dynamics in Spain: evidence from individual data (1994-2001)," Investigaciones Regionales, Asociación Española de Ciencia Regional, issue 24, pages 41-58.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2010-07

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Carmen Arias).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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