Two-Sided Learning with Applications to Labor Turnover and Worker Displacement
-
Gerard A. Pfann
and
Daniel S. Hamermesh
Summary
We make several extensions to the recent literature on job loss while modernizing the very early job-displacement literature. After constructing a dynamic model of two-sided learning between a firm and its workers, we estimate it using personnel data from Fokker Aircraft that cover the path of layoffs and quits through its bankruptcy in March 1996. We find that the firm learns about workers' loyalty (demonstrating the role of information in repeated cooperative principal- agent relationships), while workers do not learn (consistent with earlier empirical results on American workers). The type of data that we use also generates information on the value of learning and on whether and how the characteristics of workers who remain until the firm's death differ from those of all affected workers. It thus allows us to measure the increases in the firm's value from learning about its workers' behavior and to infer the extent of biases in estimating losses from displacement from samples restricted to displaced workers.
© 2008 by Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart
Articles in the same Issue
- Inhalt
- Contributions to Labormetrics: Guest Editorial
- Abhandlungen / Original Papers
- Two-Sided Learning with Applications to Labor Turnover and Worker Displacement
- Wages, Hours and Human Capital Over the Life Cycle
- The Phillips Curve and NAIRU Revisited: New Estimates for Germany
- The Aging of the Unions in West Germany, 1980–2006
- The Causes and Consequences of Adopting a Works Council
- Company-Level Pacts for Employment
- Parental Background and Earnings: German Evidence on Direct and Indirect Relationships
- Relative Demand and Supply of Skills and Wage Rigidity in the United States, Britain, and Western Germany
- The Effects of Active Labor Market Programs in Germany: An Investigation Using Different Definitions of Non-Treatment
- Dynamic Panel Data Models with Spatial Correlation
- Assessing the Rationality of Survey Expectations: The Probability Approach
- Measuring Research Intensity from Anonymized Data: Does Multiplicative Noise with Factor Structure Save Results Regarding Quotients?
- Buchbesprechung / Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Inhalt
- Contributions to Labormetrics: Guest Editorial
- Abhandlungen / Original Papers
- Two-Sided Learning with Applications to Labor Turnover and Worker Displacement
- Wages, Hours and Human Capital Over the Life Cycle
- The Phillips Curve and NAIRU Revisited: New Estimates for Germany
- The Aging of the Unions in West Germany, 1980–2006
- The Causes and Consequences of Adopting a Works Council
- Company-Level Pacts for Employment
- Parental Background and Earnings: German Evidence on Direct and Indirect Relationships
- Relative Demand and Supply of Skills and Wage Rigidity in the United States, Britain, and Western Germany
- The Effects of Active Labor Market Programs in Germany: An Investigation Using Different Definitions of Non-Treatment
- Dynamic Panel Data Models with Spatial Correlation
- Assessing the Rationality of Survey Expectations: The Probability Approach
- Measuring Research Intensity from Anonymized Data: Does Multiplicative Noise with Factor Structure Save Results Regarding Quotients?
- Buchbesprechung / Book Review
