IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/596.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Macroeconomic Impact of Flexible Labour Contracts: An Application to Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Bentolila, Samuel
  • Saint-Paul, Gilles

Abstract

This paper constructs a theoretical model to study the effects on employment of the introduction of flexible labour contracts (i.e. with low firing costs), which occurred in many European countries in the 1980s, which it then tests on Spanish data. The model predicts that such contracts increase the size of the employment response to aggregate shocks, while decreasing its persistence, and that employment overshoots its long-run level at the time these contracts are introduced. Econometric estimates of labour demand based on a panel of large Spanish industrial firms are consistent with several of the model's implications, in particular the increase in the cyclical response of employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Bentolila, Samuel & Saint-Paul, Gilles, 1991. "The Macroeconomic Impact of Flexible Labour Contracts: An Application to Spain," CEPR Discussion Papers 596, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:596
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=596
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Samuel Bentolila & Pierre Cahuc & Juan Jose Dolado & Thomas Le Barbanchon, 2010. "Two-Tier Labor Markets in the Great Recession: France vs. Spain," CESifo Working Paper Series 3269, CESifo.
    2. Juan J Dolado & Carlos Garcia--Serrano & Juan F. Jimeno, 2002. "Drawing Lessons From The Boom Of Temporary Jobs In Spain," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(721), pages 270-295, June.
    3. Fernández-Kranz, Daniel & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria, 2011. "The part-time pay penalty in a segmented labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 591-606, October.
    4. Andrea Caggese & Vicente Cuñat, 2008. "Financing Constraints and Fixed‐term Employment Contracts," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(533), pages 2013-2046, November.
    5. Yu-Fu Chen & Gylfi Zoega, 2011. "Floating Exchange Rates as Employment Protection," DEGIT Conference Papers c016_038, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    6. Tealdi, Cristina, 2011. "How do employment contract reforms affect welfare? Theory and evidence," MPRA Paper 33573, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:596. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.