Arbeitspapier
Employment Protection, Job Insecurity, and Job Mobility
This study leverages the Italian Jobs Act reform as a natural experiment to examine the impact of reduced employment protection on job insecurity and job mobility. The reform significantly lowered protection for open-ended contract workers in large firms hired after March 7, 2015, and introduced a sharp discontinuity in severance pay at 2-year tenure. Treated employees exhibit increased fear of job loss and higher termination rates. The higher job insecurity prompts workers in low-pay sectors and in low-quality firms to actively pursue job mobility, transitioning towards higher-paying positions. Conversely, workers in high-paying sectors respond by intensifying their efforts to secure their existing jobs. Crucially, all effects disappear for workers above the 2-year tenure threshold, when they become entitled to a 50% higher severance pay. These findings emphasize a complex trade-off behind the design of employment protection systems, as addressing early-stage insecurity with tailored social insurance may counteract upward mobility effects.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 16647
- Classification
-
Wirtschaft
Time Allocation and Labor Supply
Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy
Labor Contracts
Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
- Subject
-
employment protection
job insecurity
job mobility
on-the-job search
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Bertoni, Marco
Chinetti, Simone
Nistico, Roberto
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
-
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
- (where)
-
Bonn
- (when)
-
2023
- Handle
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Bertoni, Marco
- Chinetti, Simone
- Nistico, Roberto
- Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Time of origin
- 2023