IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cep/cepdps/dp0358.html

Firing Costs and Stigma: An Empirical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • P Canziani

Abstract

When information about workers' abilities is imperfect, past employment histories are important determinants of unemployment duration. This paper studies the effects of employment protection laws on unemployment spells in two countries: Italy and Spain. Italy and Spain's adoption of fixed-term contracts with lower firing costs in the mid 1980s provides an interesting empirical framework to study the effects of policies affecting firing costs. The evidence presented supports the hypothesis that when firing costs increase, so does the stigma attached to bad employment histories. First, I show that in Italy people, who became unemployed because of termination of the employment contract, have 10 per cent lower probability per year to remain unemployed than fired workers. Second in Spain, workers dismissed from a temporary job have 30 per cent shorter unemployment spells than workers fired from regulator contracts.

Suggested Citation

  • P Canziani, 1997. "Firing Costs and Stigma: An Empirical Analysis," CEP Discussion Papers dp0358, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0358
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/DP0358.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward P. Lazear, 1990. "Job Security Provisions and Employment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(3), pages 699-726.
    2. Jacob Mincer, 1986. "Wage Changes in Job Changes," NBER Working Papers 1907, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Lawrence F. Katz, 1986. "Layoffs, Recall and the Duration of Unemployment," NBER Working Papers 1825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Canziani, Patrizia, 1997. "Firing costs and stigma: an empirical analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20330, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Stephen Nickell, 1997. "Unemployment and Labor Market Rigidities: Europe versus North America," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 55-74, Summer.
    3. Kugler, Adriana, 2000. "The Incidence of Job Security Regulations on Labor Market Flexibility and Compliance in Colombia: Evidence from the 1990 Reform," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 3267, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. Stieglitz, Moritz & Setzer, Ralph, 2022. "Firm-level employment, labour market reforms, and bank distress," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    5. Claudio Montenegro & Carmen Pagés-Serra, 2003. "¿Quién se beneficia con la normativa de los mercados laborales?: Chile, 1960-1998," Research Department Publications 4346, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    6. Pedro S. Martins, 2007. "Heterogeneity In Real Wage Cyclicality," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 54(5), pages 684-698, November.
    7. Colin P. Green & John S. Heywood, 2011. "Flexible Contracts And Subjective Well‐Being," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 716-729, July.
    8. Tan Wang & Tony S. Wirjanto, 2016. "Risk Aversion, Uncertainty, Unemployment Insurance Benefit and Duration of "Wait" Unemployment," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 17(1), pages 1-34, May.
    9. Henry S. Farber, 1992. "Evaluating Competing Theories of Worker Mobility," Working Papers 1992-1, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    10. Kwiatkowski, Eugeniusz & Włodarczyk, Przemysław, . "Wpływ prawnej ochrony zatrudnienia na rynek pracy w warunkach negatywnego szoku ekonomicznego," Gospodarka Narodowa-The Polish Journal of Economics, Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie / SGH Warsaw School of Economics, vol. 2012(11-12).
    11. Stefano Scarpetta, 2014. "Employment protection," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-12, May.
    12. Nachum Sicherman, 1996. "Gender Differences in Departures from a Large Firm," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 49(3), pages 484-505, April.
    13. Daron Acemoglu & Joshua D. Angrist, 2001. "Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(5), pages 915-957, October.
    14. Liotti, Giorgio, 2020. "Labour market flexibility, economic crisis and youth unemployment in Italy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 150-162.
    15. Adachi, Daisuke & Kambayashi, Ryo & Kawaguchi, Kohei, 2025. "Employers' Unilateral Settlement of Dismissal Disputes," SocArXiv 89xgj_v1, Center for Open Science.
    16. Costas Meghir & Renata Narita & Jean-Marc Robin, 2015. "Wages and Informality in Developing Countries," SciencePo Working papers hal-03587627, HAL.
    17. Tatiana Karabchuk, 2016. "The subjective well-being of women in Europe: children, work and employment protection legislation," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 15(2), pages 219-245, November.
    18. Robert Dur & Heiner Schmittdiel, 2019. "Paid to Quit," De Economist, Springer, vol. 167(4), pages 387-406, December.
    19. Magdalena M. Ulceluse & Martin Kahanec, 2017. "Does employment protection legislation promote immigrant self-employment?," Discussion Papers 46, Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI).
    20. Tito Boeri & J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz & Vincenzo Galasso, "undated". "Cross-skill Redistribution and the Tradeoff between Unemployment Benefits and Employment Protection," Working Papers 2004-26, FEDEA.

    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:cep:cepdps:dp0358. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion-papers/ .

    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.