Documents Kramarz, Francis 15 results

"n traditional labor markets, workers transform their multidimensional skills into bundles of tasks, which they supply to their employing firms. We examine how labor markets change as new institutions and technologies make it less and less costly for firms and workers to unbundle and trade stand-alone tasks. Our analysis relies on a general equilibrium model of the labor market under bundling, combined with a full model of task unbundling.
The contrast between the old world (where bundling prevails) and the new world (with unbundled tasks) is stark. As unbundling costs fall and outsourcing markets grow, firms reinforce hiring in skills where they have a comparative advantage yielding a more polarized matching equilibrium and a flattened wage schedule. Generalist workers – endowed with a balanced set of skills – tend to benefit whereas specialists tend to be negatively affected by markets opening. Descriptive evidence, using Swedish data sources on workers' skills and their employing firms, is also presented."

"Using a data set of individual labor disputes brought to French courts over the years 1996 to 2003, the authors use variations in local conditions of the activity of the labor courts to assess the effect of dismissal costs on the labor market. First, the authors present a simple theoretical framework to explain the links between litigation costs, judicial outcomes, and firing costs. Second, they regress job flows on indicators of judicial outcomes, using an instrument, based on local shocks in the supply of lawyers. They find that when the numbers of lawyers increase, workers litigate more often, which should increase the firing costs for the firms. This increased filing rate causes a large decrease in employment fluctuations, especially for shrinking or exiting firms. The total effect on employment growth is slightly positive, and this result is more sensitive to the adopted specification."

"We estimate a model of the joint participation and mobility along with the individuals' wage formation in France. Our model makes it possible to distinguish between unobserved person heterogeneity and state-dependence. We estimate the model using state of the art bayesian methods employing a long panel (1976-1995) for France. Our results clearly show that returns to seniority are small, and for some education groups are close to zero. The specification here is the same as that used in Buchinsky, Fougère, Kramarz and Tchernis (2002), where the returns to seniority were found to be quite large. This result also holds when using the method employed by Altonji and Williams (1992) for both countries. It turns out that differences between the two countries relate to firm-to-firm mobility. Using a model of Burdett and Coles (2003), we explain the rationale for this phenomenon. Specifically, in a low-mobility country such as France, there is little gain in compensating workers for long tenures because they tend to stay in the firm for most, if not all, of their career. This is true even in cases where individuals clearly possess substantial amount of firm-specific human capital. In contrast, for a high-mobility country such as the United States, high returns to seniority have a clear incentive effect, and firms are induced to pay the premium associated with firm-specific human capital to avoid losing their most productive workers."

"Ce rapport détaille les récentes réformes institutionnelles intervenues sur le marché du travail allemand et les travaux visant à évaluer leur efficacité. En premier lieu les auteurs explicitent les réformes Hartz, pierre angulaire de ces mutations.



Celles-ci entendent mobiliser les bénéficiaires de prestations chômage en limitant leur générosité et en durcissant les conditions pour pouvoir refuser un emploi, en favorisant la création d'entreprises individuelles et certaines opportunités d'emploi temporaire. Les réformes Hartz proposent également d'améliorer l'efficacité du processus d'accompagnement des chômeurs en réorganisant les agences pour l'emploi à qui l'on confère de nouveaux instruments tels que les centres d'emploi, la possibilité de recourir à des prestataires privés et de délivrer des bons de placement.



En second lieu, les auteurs exposent les spécificités du système de relations sociales en Allemagne qui repose sur deux principaux piliers : la législation et la négociation collective. En définitive, si les études de chaque mesure prise isolément ne sont pas toujours conclusives, l'ensemble des changements intervenus a constitué un véritable « glissement de paradigme » qui s'est avéré bénéfique pour l'emploi. Dans son commentaire Gilbert Cette avance que la stabilité de l'emploi en Allemagne pendant la crise malgré une contraction de son PIB deux fois plus forte qu'en France peut également s'expliquer par le recours plus important à l'emploi partiel ainsi que par la baisse conventionnelle transitoire de la durée du travail et des salaires contre des garanties de maintien de l'emploi ou d'absence de licenciement économique.



Michel Didier met quant à lui en exergue deux spécificités allemandes contribuant indéniablement au « glissement de paradigme » : la capacité à mener des négociations sur les trois composantes du triptyque « emploi-salaire-durée du travail » au niveau de la branche mais surtout de l'entreprise, et la politique globale de compétitivité assumée par l'ensemble des partenaires sociaux.



Le complément de Perrine Fréhaut compare les dispositifs de chômage partiel en France et en Allemagne en se concentrant sur leurs effets pendant la crise. Elle examine les explications de la différence d'intensité dans le recours au chômage partiel : l'importance du choc, la structure de la situation sur le marché du travail avant la crise, la complexité/simplicité des dispositifs quant aux schémas de financement et à la répartition des rôles entre pouvoirs publics, syndicats et entreprises."

"About one in four workers challenges her dismissal in front of a labor court in France. Using a data set of individual labor disputes brought to French courts over the years 1996 to 2003, we examine the impact of labor court activity on labor market flows. First, we present a simple theoretical model showing the links between judicial costs and judicial case outcomes. Second, we exploit our model as well as the French institutional setting to generate instruments for these endogenous outcomes. In particular, we use shocks in the supply of lawyers who resettle close to their university of origin. Using these instruments, we show that labor court decisions have a causal effect on labor flows. More trials and more cases won by the workers cause more job destructions. More settlements, higher filing rates, and a larger fraction of workers represented by a lawyer dampen job destructions. Various robustness checks confirm these findings."