Die Landesregierungen haben in den letzten 25 Jahren angesichts Sparzwang und knapper öffentlicher Finanzen massive Personalreduzierungen und Organisationsveränderungen vorgenommen, welche die Handlungsfähigkeit des öffentlichen Dienstes mehr und mehr infrage stellen. Die Beschäftigtenzahl...

It is well documented that displaced workers suffer severe earnings losses, but not why this is so. One reason may be that workers are unable or unwilling to move to regions with better employment opportunities. We study this and find that job displacement increases regional mobility but,...

This paper considers how companies use their own mass communication media to create, with the aid of metaphors, a legitimizing image of their practices. The analysis is based on the example of two banks, both of which undertook massive staff and cost reductions between 2001 and 2003. Downsizing...

This paper aims to provide a frame of mind to understand the link between structural change and regional unemployment, and, based on it, to survey the most recent literature. An overly optimistic view on the ability of the adjustment mechanism to generate convergence in local unemployment rates...

We reviewed all articles reporting on job creation and job destruction by companies in Germany between December 2000 and September 2008 in Die Welt, one of the leading German newspapers, using experiments to test our selection criteria. There is a large difference in coverage of job creation and...

Using matched employer-employee data, we analyse the impact of immigrants on natives' employment in Portugal. Using different model specifications, we show that the natives and immigrants are 'complements' at most occupation levels, in the sense that they are jointly hired and fired. Controlling...

This paper aims to provide a frame of mind to understand the link between structural change and regional unemployment, and, based on it, to survey the most recent literature. An overly optimistic view on the ability of the adjustment mechanism to generate convergence in local unemployment rates...

We establish the existence of strong media slant against foreign owners. Using a unique data set from nation-wide distributed quality newspapers in Germany, we find that a foreign firm that downsizes in Germany receives almost twice as much attention than a domestic firm. This quantitative slant...

This paper establishes a new fact about the compositional changes in the pool of unemployed over the U.S. business cycle and evaluates a number of theories that can potentially explain it. Using micro-data from the Current Population Survey for the years 1962-2011, it documents that in...

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

In this paper, I discuss three sets of links which I uncover in the data on aggregate US job and worker flows. Job flows are strongly related to aggregate employment growth, while worker flows are strongly related to employment growth and the unemployment rate. I show that a simple frictionless...

This paper examines the comparative response of multinationals and domestic firms to an economic crisis, using the empirical setting of a well defined case of economic slowdown in Chile. We find that employment in manufacturing plants has been drastically reduced during the economic crisis. Our...

Using firm-level and individual panel data from 2008-2009, the paper looks at how Hungarian firms combined employment reduction with "softer" measures like short-work and wage cuts, in response to the crisis. The data suggest that the wage distribution remained practically unchanged while hours...

Economies with low unemployment often have high disability rates. In Norway, the permanent disability insurance rolls outnumber registered unemployment by four to one. Based on administrative register data matched with firms' financial statements and closure data collected from bankruptcy...