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Review of Financial Studies Vol. 31 No. 4 2018

Employment and Wage Insurance within Firms: Worldwide Evidence

Andrew Ellul; Marco Pagano; Fabiano Schivardi

Abstract

Using a firm-level international panel data set, we study if unemployment insurance offered by the government and by firms are substitutes. We exploit cross-country and time-series variation in public unemployment insurance as a shifter of workers’ demand for insurance within firms, and family versus nonfamily ownership as a shifter of firms’ supply of insurance. Our evidence supports the substitutability hypothesis: employment stability in family firms is greater, and the wage discount larger, in countries and periods with less generous public unemployment insurance, whereas no such substitutability emerges for nonfamily firms.

Volume
31
Issue
4
Pages
1298-1340
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib

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