According to the Hutchens (1999) model, early retirement is not explained as a result ofmaximizing expected individual utility but rather as a demand-side phenomenon arising froma firm’s profit-maximizing behaviour...

This paper contributes to recent research on work organization as a key success factor.

Firms select not only how many, but also which workers to hire. Yet, in standard searchmodels of the labor market, all workers have the same probability of being hired. We arguethat selective hiring crucially affects welfare analysis. Our model is isomorphic to a searchmodel under random hiring...

The Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact onnational labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also variedgreatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurancebenefits and minimum...

We estimate the magnitude of social interaction effects in disability pension participation amongolder workers in Norway. The problem of omitted variable bias is addressed using neighbors’exposure to plant downsizing events as an instrument for the disability entry rate among one’spreviously...

The potentially adverse labor market effects of severance pay mandates are a continuingsource of policy concern. In a seminal study, Lazear (1990) found that contract avoidance ofseverance pay firing costs was theoretically simple – a bonding scheme would do – but thatempirically the labor...

In this paper we study the joint decision process of changing the structure of jobs and layingoff individual workers in a firm that downsizes its workforce. A hierarchical decision model isproposed and estimated using personnel data from a firm in demise comparing thecharacteristics of the...