TY  - JOUR
AU  - Haltiwanger,John
AU  - Scarpetta,Stefano
AU  - Schweiger,Helena
TI  - Assessing Job Flows Across Countries: The Role of Industry, Firm Size and Regulations
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13920
PY  - 2008
Y2  - April 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13920
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13920.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
John C. Haltiwanger
Department of Economics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Tel: 301/405-3504
Fax: 301/405-3542
E-Mail: haltiwan@econ.umd.edu

Stefano Scarpetta
OECD
Directorate for Employment,
Labour and Social Affairs
2, rue Andrè-Pascal
75775 Paris Cedex 16, France
E-Mail: stefano.scarpetta@oecd.org

Helena Schweiger
EBRD, Office of the Chief Economist
One Exchange Square
London EC2A 2JN United Kingdom
E-Mail: helena.schweiger@gmail.com
AB  - This paper analyzes job flows in a sample of 16 industrial and emerging economies over the past decade, exploiting a harmonized firm-level dataset.  It shows that industry and firm size effects (and especially firm size) account for a large fraction in the overall variability in job flows.  However, large residual differences remain in the job flow patterns across countries.  To account for the latter, the paper explores the role of differences in employment protection legislation across countries.  Using a difference-in-difference approach that minimizes possible endogeneity and omitted variable problems, our findings show that hiring and firing costs tend to curb job flows, particularly in those industries and firm size classes that require more frequent labor adjustment.
ER  -