Nova SBE Working Papers

Employers’ associations, worker mobility, and training

Author: Pedro S. Martins, Jonathan P. Thomas
Date: 2023
Number of pages: 51

This paper studies firm-provided training in a context of potential worker mobility. We argue that such worker mobility may be reduced by employers’ associations (EAs) through no-poach agreements. First, we sketch a simple model to illustrate the impact of employer coordination on training. We then present supporting evidence from rich matched panel data, including firms’ EA affiliation and workers’ individual training levels. We find that workers’ mobility between firms in the same EA is considerably lower than mobility between equivalent firms not in the same EA. We also find that training provision by EA firms is considerably higher, even when drawing on within-employee variation and considering multiple dimensions of training. We argue that these results are consistent with a role played by EAs in reducing worker mobility.

Labour market concentration, wages and job security in Europe

Author: Andrea Bassanini, Giulia Bovini, Eve Caroli, Jorge Casanova Ferrando, Federico Cingano, Paolo Falco, Florentino Felgueroso, Marcel Jansen , Pedro S. Martins A
Date: 2023
Number of pages: 64

We investigate the impact of labour market concentration on two dimensions of job quality, namely wages and job security. We leverage rich administrative linked employer-employee data from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain in the 2010s to provide the first comparable cross-country evidence in the literature. We show that the elasticities of wages with respect to labour market concentration are strikingly similar across countries. Increasing labour market concentration by 10% reduces wages by 0.19% in Germany, 0.22% in France, 0.25% in Portugal and 0.29% in Denmark. We find greater elasticities for job security. An increase in labour market concentration by 10% reduces the probability of being hired on a permanent contract by 0.46% in France, 0.51% in Germany and 2.34% in Portugal. In Italy and Spain, while not affecting this probability, labour market concentration has a strong negative effect on conversions to a permanent contract once hired on a temporary one. Using German and Portuguese data, we provide suggestive evidence that the similarity of our wage elasticities across countries and the greater sensitivity of job security to labour market concentration may be explained by the fact that sector-level collective bargaining is dominant in the countries we study and that it sets wages but usually not contract type.

Spillover effects of employment protection

Author: Pierre Cahuc, Pauline Carry, Franck Malherbet, Pedro S. Martins
Date: 2023
Number of pages: 111

Estimates of the impact of employment protection heavily rely on reduced-form methods, assuming that there are no indirect effects between firms. This paper exploits a labor law reform implemented in Portugal in 2009 which restricted the use of fixed-term contracts for large firms above a specific size threshold,to investigate and quantify spillover effects. Standardreduced-form estimates based on the hypothesis of the absence of spillover towards firms for which the reform does not apply yield a negative impact on employment of about 1.5%. However, we find evidence of significant spillovers. The estimation of the macroeconomic effects of the reform with a search and matching model accounting for spillovers yields an almost negligible employment impact of the reform, more than ten times smaller than that obtained with the reduced form estimates. This result underlines that the numerous reduced-form estimates of the impact of employment protection that rely on firm size thresholds must be interpreted with caution.

The economic value of land-based ecosystem services in Portugal: a spatially explicit approach

Author: João Seixo, Carina Vieira da Silva, Filipe S. Campos, Pedro Cabral, Luis Catela-Nunes, Antonieta Cunha e Sá
Date: 2023
Number of pages: 47

This study estimates the economic value of seven land based ecosystem services for mainland Portugal in 2018. The estimated services are Climate Regulation, Drought Regulation, Erosion Prevention, using the market price methodology, and Food Supply, Pollination, Recreation and Water Purification using a meta-analytic benefit transfer function. By estimating a unique meta-analytic benefit transfer function for each service, the commodity consistency condition is addressed. Different welfare measures were not pooled together and methodological variables are not included in the vector of explanatory variables. The results are spatially explicit at the hectare level providing the benchmark to which the consequences of land-use changes to the value of ecosystem services and, therefore, to the welfare of local populations can be adequately assessed.

The impact of industrial pollution exposure on hospital admissions: Evidence from a cement plant in Russia

Author: Mariia Murasheva, Maria Antonieta Cunha e Sá
Date: 2022
Number of pages: 55

The effect of individual-level daily silicon dust exposure from cement production on the probability of hospital admissions for respiratory-related reasons is examined. The dataset was collected at the cement plant in Bryanskii region, Russia. We use an aerodynamic dispersion model to calculate pollutants’ exposure. We find significant impact of silicon dust on hospitalizations for children and elderly adults. We identify a non-linear response of the individual probability of hospital admissions to the average daily inhaled concentrations in the city area where exposure is higher. Our findings contribute to better inform policymakers aiming at reducing industrial air pollution exposure in Russia.