Documents labour market flexibility 399 results

"The question we investigate empirically in this article is whether immigration makes the labour supply in the receiving country more responsive to regional differences in economic opportunities. The main merit of the paper is that we examine three stages in the regional mobility of refugees and labour immigrants: First, the settlement pattern of newly arrived immigrants, second, their subsequent mobility between regions and, third, their eventual exit from the regional labour market to abroad. The analyses apply to immigrants who arrived in Norway from 1995 to 2004. In all three stages, mobility is investigated with regard to its responsiveness to regional differences in wages and unemployment. The main finding is that, in all three stages, the geographical mobility of immigrants is sensitive to regional economic opportunities. In that sense, immigrants do “grease the wheels” of the labour markets, through all the three stages of mobility. The most robust results are found for regional unemployment differences. With regard to natives, we generally do not find any strong evidence for “greasing the wheels” effects."

"Using Italian data, this paper investigates the wage implications of temporary jobs across the whole pay profile using unconditional quantile regression (UQR) models. Results clearly indicate that the wage penalty associated to temporary jobs is significantly larger at the bottom of wage profile and is almost absent for high-wage jobs. This is in line with the sticky floors hypothesis, supporting the idea that the wage gap for temporary employees depends on their position in the wage distribution for low-paid jobs. To recover a causal interpretation, I employ an instrumental variable (IV) strategy. I adopt the unconditional instrumental variable quantile treatment effects (IVQTE) estimator proposed by Frolich and Melly, which corrects for endogenous selection in temporary contracts. The IVQTE estimates yield similar results to standard UQR, even if the wage penalty is larger in size at the bottom of the wage distribution and disappears at the top quantiles. This evidence highlights that policies aimed at increasing flexibility may reinforce the two-tier nature of the Italian labour market and the relative wage inequality."

"Este artículo analiza los resultados de las reformas laborales llevadas a cabo en España desde la década de los noventa y su repercusión sobre la temporalidad en el empleo. El análisis de los presupuestos contenidos en las distintas reformas y su justificación resulta un buen ejercicio para identificar qué hay de nuevo en las políticas de empleo encaminadas a reformar un mercado de trabajo caracterizado por la alta temporalidad, la elevada rotación en el empleo y las altas cifras de desempleo. El análisis de la evolución de esta forma de contratación en sus distintas modalidades pone de manifiesto la resistencia del mercado de trabajo a las medidas legislativas y, por tanto, su ineficacia."

"Moves towards a more flexible labor market have focused research attention on the health effects of downsizing, temporary employment, and job insecurity. Most published research documents adverse effects on health, although null findings and direct associations have been observed. There is evidence that major downsizing is associated with poor mental health, medically certified sickness absence, and poor physical health, including cardiovascular disease mortality, among the survivors of downsizing. Recent research suggests that repeated exposure to personnel expansion also predicts sickness absence and hospitalization. There is strong evidence that job insecurity adversely affects psychological health and also evidence of increases in poor self-reported physical health, workplace injuries and accidents, sickness absence, and health service use. However, evidence of a link with disease and premature death remains limited. While temporary workers are initially selected for good health, they generally have poorer mental and physical health, including increased premature mortality, in the long term. "

"Firms in the same political economy specialize in the pursuit of the same competitive strategy—so the argument of the competitiveness literature. The reason is that national institutions provide specific input factors which, in turn, are required for that strategy. To test this chain of reasoning, I identify the strategy of pharmaceutical firms in Germany, Italy, and the UK. Contrary to the expectations of the literature, I find that the firms in each economy pursue the same strategy variety. Seeking to understand how deviant firms can compete despite comparative institutional disadvantages, I analyse the importance of diverse labour-market institutions for the provision of particular skill types which, in turn, are needed for these strategies. These analyses show that firms succeed in circumventing institutional constraints at the national level by relying on two functionally equivalent institutions: open international labour markets and atypical contracts."