IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bgu/wpaper/0812.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Do Firing Costs Affect Innovation And Growth When Workers’ Ability Is Unknown – Employment Protection As A Burden On A Firm’S Screening Process

Author

Listed:
  • Binyamin Berdugo

    (Dept. of Economics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)

  • Sharon Hadad

    (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the implication of employment protection legislation on a firm's screening process. We present a model in which human-capital-intensive firms (hightech) with imperfect information about their workers' type attempt during a trial period to identify those incompetent workers who they will subsequently dismiss. Employment protection measures, however, place a burden on this screening process and thereby motivate innovators to embark on medium-tech projects which are more flexible in their human capital requirements. Employment protection legislation thereby distorts the pattern of specialization in favor of medium-tech firms rather than high-tech firms and consequently slows down the process of economic growth. The results of the paper are consistent with documented data on Europe versus US productivity growth and specialization patterns as well as with employment protection legislation in those economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Binyamin Berdugo & Sharon Hadad, 2008. "How Do Firing Costs Affect Innovation And Growth When Workers’ Ability Is Unknown – Employment Protection As A Burden On A Firm’S Screening Process," Working Papers 0812, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bgu:wpaper:0812
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/humsos/Econ/Workingpapers/0812.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1991. "Quality Ladders and Product Cycles," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 557-586.
    2. Joseph Zeira, 1998. "Workers, Machines, and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1091-1117.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    4. Aghion, Philippe & Howitt, Peter, 1992. "A Model of Growth through Creative Destruction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(2), pages 323-351, March.
    5. Susanto Basu & David N. Weil, 1998. "Appropriate Technology and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1025-1054.
    6. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 2002. "Employment protection, international specialization, and innovation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 375-395, February.
    7. Oded Galor & Omer Moav & Dietrich Vollrath, 2005. "Inequality in Landownership, the Emergence of Human-Capital Promoting Institutions, and the Great Divergence," Working Papers 2005-03, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    8. Alberto Alesina & Joseph Zeira, 2006. "Technology and Labor Regulations," NBER Working Papers 12581, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Oded Galor & Omer Moav & Dietrich Vollrath, 2009. "Inequality in Landownership, the Emergence of Human-Capital Promoting Institutions, and the Great Divergence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 143-179.
    10. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1991. "Quality Ladders in the Theory of Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(1), pages 43-61.
    11. Bertola, Giuseppe, 1992. "Labor Turnover Costs and Average Labor Demand," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(4), pages 389-411, October.
    12. 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.
    13. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2002. "Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1231-1294.
    14. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2000. "Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(4), pages 1167-1199.
    15. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 1997. "Is labour rigidity harming Europe's competitiveness? The effect of job protection on the pattern of trade and welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 499-506, April.
    16. Hopenhayn, Hugo & Rogerson, Richard, 1993. "Job Turnover and Policy Evaluation: A General Equilibrium Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(5), pages 915-938, October.
    17. Oded Galor & Andrew Mountford, 2008. "Trading Population for Productivity: Theory and Evidence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(4), pages 1143-1179.
    18. Gust, Christopher & Marquez, Jaime, 2004. "International comparisons of productivity growth: the role of information technology and regulatory practices," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 33-58, February.
    19. Adriana D. Kugler & Gilles Saint-Paul, 2004. "How Do Firing Costs Affect Worker Flows in a World with Adverse Selection?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(3), pages 553-584, July.
    20. Oded Galor & Omer Moav & Dietrich Vollrath, 2005. "Land Inequality and the Emergence of Human Capital Promoting Institutions," Development and Comp Systems 0502018, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Atkinson, Anthony B & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1969. "A New View of Technological Change," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 79(315), pages 573-578, September.
    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. Binyamin Berdugo & Sharon Hadad, 2008. "How Do Firing Costs Affect Innovation and Growth when Workers' Ability is Unknown? – Employment Protection as a Burden on a Firm's Screening Process," DEGIT Conference Papers c013_004, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    2. Berdugo, Binyamin & Hadad, Sharon, 2008. "How Do Firing Costs Affect Innovation and Growth when Workers' Ability is Unknown? – Employment Protection as a Burden on a Firm's Screening Process," MPRA Paper 11410, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. der Beek, Karine van, 2010. "The effects of political fragmentation on investments: A case study of watermill construction in medieval Ponthieu, France," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 369-380, October.
    4. Chu, Angus C. & Furukawa, Yuichi & Wang, Xilin, 2022. "Rent-seeking government and endogenous takeoff in a Schumpeterian economy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    5. Nobuhiro Mizuno & Katsuyuki Naito & Ryosuke Okazawa, 2017. "Inequality, extractive institutions, and growth in nondemocratic regimes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 115-142, January.
    6. Michael Knoblach & Fabian Stöckl, 2020. "What Determines The Elasticity Of Substitution Between Capital And Labor? A Literature Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 847-875, September.
    7. William Easterly & Ross Levine, 2016. "The European origins of economic development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 225-257, September.
    8. Chu, Angus C. & Fan, Haichao & Wang, Xilin, 2020. "Status-seeking culture and development of capitalism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 275-290.
    9. Chu, Angus C. & Peretto, Pietro F. & Wang, Xilin, 2022. "Agricultural revolution and industrialization," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    10. Sarmistha Pal & Sugata Ghosh, 2008. "The Elite and the Marginalised: an Analysis of Public Spending on Mass Education in the Indian States," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 08-15, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    11. Vitantonio Mariella, 2023. "Landownership concentration and human capital accumulation in post-unification Italy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1695-1764, July.
    12. Dalila Chenaf-Nicet, 2020. "Dynamics of Structural Change in a Globalized World: What Is the Role Played by Institutions in the Case of Sub-Saharan African Countries?," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 32(4), pages 998-1037, September.
    13. Cinnirella, Francesco & Hornung, Erik, 2016. "Landownership concentration and the expansion of education," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 135-152.
    14. Aguirre, Alvaro, 2019. "Rebellions, Technical Change, and the Early Development of Political Institutions in Latin America," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 65-89.
    15. Dietrich Vollrath, 2011. "The agricultural basis of comparative development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 343-370, December.
    16. Per Skedinger, 2010. "Employment Protection Legislation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13686.
    17. Erkan Goeren, 2017. "The Role of Novelty-Seeking Traits in Contemporary Knowledge Creation," Working Papers V-402-17, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Sep 2017.
    18. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2009. "Rent Preservation and the Persistence of Underdevelopment," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 178-218, January.
    19. Zingales, Luigi & Rajan, Raghuram G., 2006. "The Persistence of Underdevelopment: Institutions, Human Capital, or Constituencies?," Working Papers 209, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    20. Chu, Angus & Cozzi, Guido & Fan, Haichao, 2022. "Natural Selection and Innovation-Driven Growth," MPRA Paper 113502, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bgu:wpaper:0812. 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: Aamer Abu-Qarn (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edbguil.html .

    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.