In this article, we estimate the structure of costs of hiring, terminating, and retiring employees in France. We use a representative panel data set of French establishments that contains direct measures of these various costs as well as measures of entries and exits for the years 1992 and 1996....

In this article, we estimate the structure of costs of hiring, terminating, and retiring employees in France. We use a representative panel data set of French establishments that contains direct measures of these various costs as well as measures of entries and exits for the years 1992 and 1996....

We analyze how hiring and firing costs as well as firing regulatory delays affect firms' hiring, firing, and relocation policy with a stochastic control model. These frictions are substantial; e.g., the firing delay can be almost a year. In the model hiring and firing costs depend on the firm...