The China Shock, Employment Protection, and European Jobs

The authors investigate the effects of Chinese import competition on transitions into and out of employment using comparable worker-level data for 14 European countries. Results indicate that, on average, Chinese imports are associated with an increased probability that employed workers become unemployed and with a reduction in worker flows from unemployment to employment. In countries with high levels of employment protection, incumbent workers are shielded against the risk of job loss due to Chinese competition, but unemployed workers’ prospects seem to be particularly negatively affected in these countries. The authors also provide evidence that the effects of increased Chinese imports differ by worker groups and the tasks performed on the job.

Firm Dynamics, On-the-Job Search and Labor Market Fluctuations

We devise a tractable model of firm dynamics with on-the-job search. The model admits analytical solutions for equilibrium outcomes, including quit, layoff, hiring and vacancy-filling rates, as well as the distributions of job values, a fundamental challenge posed by the environment. Optimal labor demand takes a novel form whereby hiring firms allow their marginal product to diffuse over an interval. The evolution of the marginal product over this interval endogenously exhibits gradual mean reversion, evoking a notion of imperfect labor market competition. This in turn contributes to dispersion in marginal products, giving rise to endogenous misallocation. Quantitatively, the model provides a parsimonious reconciliation of leading estimates of rent sharing, the negative association between wages and quits, the link between job and worker flows, and the cyclicality of labor market quantities and prices.

The Internal Labor Markets of Business Groups

This paper provides micro evidence of labor mobility inside business groups. We show that worker flows between firms in the same group are stronger than with unaffiliated firms. Moreover, the reallocation of top workers between group firms is more sensitive to international shocks. Top workers that move within the group in response to shocks reach higher positions and earn higher wages. We find suggestive evidence that productivity increases when firms receive same-group top workers. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that, in response to changing opportunities, joint ownership eases the redeployment of workers endowed with general management skills.

THE IMPACT OF REMITTANCES FROM ABROAD ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN TAJIKISTAN

The relevance of this article is due to the importance of labor migration and remittances from migrant workers for the economy of Tajikistan. The purpose of the article is to determine the impact of remittances on living standards in Tajikistan at both the national and local levels. It is known that labor migration has become a significant socio-economic phenomenon for the country and society, involving a large part of Tajikistan’s population. Using statistical and sociological research methods, the authors show the key trends and the scale of labor emigration from Tajikistan in 1990-2020, as well as the socio-demographic structure of migrant worker flows from Tajikistan to the Russian Federation and other countries, with identification of a new trend towards a reorientation of migration flows to OECD countries. It has been established that migrant remittances have a positive impact on GDP growth, helping to open small businesses, develop entrepreneurship, create new jobs in the private sector, and boost construction. Remittances stimulate additional consumption: migrant workers’ households have more opportunities to meet their basic needs for food, consumer goods and durables, education, etc. The negative impact of remittances is that they actually help to meet only current needs, while the creation of new, high-technology jobs is slow and insufficient, lagging behind population growth. The country thus becomes hostage to external market conditions: the demand for foreign labor and crisis phenomena in the receiving countries.

Worker flows, reallocation dynamics, and firm productivity: new evidence from longitudinal matched employer–employee data

This article investigates the impact of the worker flows of a firm on productivity by using unique longitudinal matched employer–employee data. The analysis has split a firm’s total worker flows into three components: workers’ replacements (excess worker flows), hirings introduced to increase the firm’s employment level (net hirings), and separations of workers intended to decrease the firm’s workforce (net separations). This has allowed the impact of workers’ replacements, which represent the most prominent and compelling feature of worker mobility, to be isolated from the other two components. Endogeneity has been dealt with by using a modified version of Ackerberg et al.'s (2015, Econometrica, 83(6), 2411–2451) control function method, which explicitly accounts for firm-fixed effects. The main findings are that (i) excess flows have an inverted U-shape impact on productivity, (ii) net hirings foster firm productivity, and (iii) net separations damage it. The impacts are heterogeneous and vary widely on the basis of the types of replacements, the categories of workers involved, and the types of firms experiencing such flows. Overall, the findings of this article highlight the importance of reallocation dynamics to obtain better employer–employee matches, and call for a reconsideration of policies concerning the flexibility of the labor market.

Worker Mobility and Domestic Production Networks

We show that domestic production networks shape worker flows between firms. Data on the universe of firm-to-firm transactions for the Dominican Republic, matched with employer-employee records, reveals that about 20 percent of workers who change firms move to a buyer or supplier of their original firm. This is a considerably larger share than would be implied by a random allocation of movers to firms. We find considerable gains associated with this form of hiring: higher worker wages, lower job separation rates, faster firm productivity growth, and faster coworker wage growth. Hiring workers from a supplier is followed by a rising share of purchases from that supplier. These findings indicate that human capital is easily transferable along the supply chain and that human capital accumulated while working at a firm is complementary with the intermediate products/services produced by that firm.