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This paper provides new stylized facts about labor earnings inequality and dynamics in France for the period 1991–2016. Using linked employer–employee data, we show that (i) labor inequality in France is low compared to other developed countries and has been decreasing until the financial crisis of 2009 and increasing since then, (ii) women experienced high earnings growth, in particular at the bottom of the distribution, in contrast to the stability observed for men. Both result from a decrease in labor costs at the minimum wage and an increase in the hourly minimum in the aftermath of the 35h workweek policy, (iii) top earnings (top 5 and 1%) grew moderately while very top earnings (top 0.1 and 0.01%) experienced a much higher growth, (iv) inequality between and within cohorts follow the same U‐shaped pattern as global inequality: it decreased before 2009 and then increased until 2016, (v) Individual earnings mobility is stable between 1991 and 2016, and very low at the top of the distribution, (vi) the distribution of earnings growth is negatively skewed, leptokurtic, and varies with age. Then, studying earnings dispersion both within and between territories, we document strong differences across cities as well as between urban and rural areas, even after controlling for observable characteristics. We also observe a continuous decrease in earnings inequality between territories. However, a larger inflation in rural territories mitigates this convergence. Finally, we document a strong reduction in inequality within rural and remote territories, again driven by changes at the bottom of the wage distribution.

Many previous studies have shown that skilled and educated women have fewer children. By comparing twins and close siblings in Swedish register data, we show that the negative association between human capital and fertility mostly reflects family background factors. For males, human capital measures are unrelated to fertility in the overall population, but this again masks the influence of family background factors as high-skilled males tend to have more children than their less-skilled twins or siblings. Hence, family background factors have a strong negative impact on the overall association between human capital measures and fertility for both women and men. Non-cognitive abilities deviate from these patterns—these abilities remain strongly complementary to fertility both within and across families. Our results can be reconciled with a stylized model where family-specific preferences for fertility are shared across generations and shape investments in skills and traits when children are young.

Le recours a la formation en apprentissage est inegal sur le territoire national, et l’on observe notamment de fortes disparites regionales. Dans cette etude, nous proposons d’analyser la relation entre les ressources financieres au niveau regional et le recours a l’apprentissage dans chaque region. Pour cela, nous avons construit une base de donnees inedite sur les depenses des vingt-deux anciennes regions de France metropolitaine. Nous utilisons egalement les donnees de l’enquete Generation 2010 du Cereq, pour comprendre les decisions individuelles de suivre une formation par apprentissage, selon les specificites regionales.

Using plant-level data from France, we document a potential cost of political connections for firms that is not offset by other benefits. Politically connected CEOs alter corporate employment decisions to help (regional) politicians in their re-election efforts by having higher job and plant creation rates, and lower rates of destruction in election years, especially in politically contested areas. There is little evidence that connected firms benefit from preferential access to government resources, such as subsidies or tax exemptions. Connected firms are less profitable in the cross-section and also experience a drop in profitability when a connected CEO comes to power.

Short-time work programs were revived by the Great Recession. To understand their operating mechanisms, we first provide a model showing that short-time work may save jobs in firms hit by strong negative revenue shocks, but not in less severely-hit firms, where hours worked are reduced, without saving jobs. The cost of saving jobs is low because short-time work targets those at risk of being destroyed. Using extremely detailed data on the administration of the program covering the universe of French establishments, we devise a causal identification strategy based on the geography of the program that demonstrates that short-time work saved jobs in firms faced with large drops in their revenues during the Great Recession, in particular when highly levered, but only in these firms. The measured cost per saved job is shown to be very low relative to that of other employment policies.

I present a summary of virtually ten years of research using a simple point of view in which firms among other assets, use networks to perform a wealth of tasks: hiring, firing, buying from suppliers, governing the firm … Access to such networks is rarely included when financiers assess the value of a firm. This line of research suggests that they should.

Education production functions that feature school and student fixed effects are identified using students' school mobility. However, student mobility is driven by factors like parents' labour market shocks and divorce. Movers experience large achievement drops, are more often minority and free meal students, and sort endogenously into peer groups and school types. We exploit an English institutional feature whereby some students must change schools between grades 2 and 3. We find no evidence of endogenous sorting of such compulsory movers across peer groups or school types. Non-compulsory movers bias school quality estimates downward by as much as 20% of a SD.

The conditions under which young workers find their first real post-graduation jobs are important for their future careers and insufficiently documented given their potential importance for young workers welfare. To study these conditions, and in particular the role played by social ties, we use a Swedish population-wide linked employer–employee data set of graduates from all levels of schooling that includes detailed information on family ties, neighbourhoods, schools, class composition, and parents' and children's employers over a period covering years with both high and low unemployment, together with measures of firm performance. We find that strong social ties (parents) are an important determinant for where young workers find their first job. The effects are larger if the graduate's position is “weak” (low education, bad grades), during high unemployment years, and when information on potential openings are likely to be scarce. On the hiring side, by contrast, the effects are larger if the parent's position is “strong” (long tenure, high wage) and if the parent's plant is more productive. The youths appear to benefit from the use of strong social ties through faster access to jobs and by better labour market outcomes as measured a few years after entry. In particular, workers finding their entry jobs through strong social ties are considerably more likely to remain in this job, while experiencing better wage growth than other entrants in the same plant. Firms also appear to benefit from these wage costs (relative to comparable entrants) starting at a lower base. They also benefit on the parents' side; parents' wage growth drops dramatically exactly at the entry of one of their children in the plant, although this is a moment when firm profits tend to be growing. Indeed, the firm-side benefits appear large enough for (at least small) firms to increase job creation at the entry level in years when a child of one of their employees graduates.

This paper provides empirical evidence consistent with the facts that (1) social networks may strongly affect board composition and (2) social networks may be detrimental to corporate governance. Our empirical investigation relies on a unique dataset on executives and outside directors of corporations listed on the Paris stock exchange over the 1992-2003 period. This data source is a matched employer employee dataset providing both detailed information on directors/CEOs and information on the firm employing them. We first find a very strong and robust correlation between the CEO's network and that of his directors. Networks of former high ranking civil servants are the most active in shaping board composition. Our identification strategy takes into account (1) differences in unobserved directors' "abilities" and (2) the unobserved propensity of firms to hire directors from particular networks, irrespective of the CEO's identity. We then show that the governance of firms run by former civil servants is relatively worse on many dimensions. Former civil servants are less likely to leave their CEO job when their firm performs badly. Secondly, CEOs who are former bureaucrats are more likely to accumulate directorships, and the more they do, the less profitable is the firm they run. Thirdly, the value created by acquisitions made by former bureaucrats is lower. All in all, these firms are less profitable on average.

Before 1997, compulsory military service was a way for many young French men to obtain their driving licence for free. After the abolition of compulsory conscription in 1997, this sex-based discrimination disappeared. We use this shock in its two dimensions. First, it was a supply shock, since we show the abolition induced a decline in the fraction of men holding a driving licence, particularly for men living in urban areas. Because the causal relation between holding a driving licence and employment is hard to demonstrate, we use this policy change as an instrument for the former. Some elements of our analysis show that employment and having a driving licence are closely related. However, we cannot fully demonstrate that our results are due to the lack of a driving licence in itself rather than due to other consequences of the abolition of national service (e.g. professional courses or the associated loss of experience). Second, it was a demand shock, since these men were forced to turn to driving schools. Here, we are able to show that the abolition of national service had a direct and uncontroversial effect on the (heavily regulated) driving schools industry. The demand shock resulted in increased rents. These rents translated into an increase in the number of driving schools, stable total employment, a decrease in average employment, no increase of total sales or value-added, no obvious decrease in profits per school, but an increase in wages paid to the teachers in those cities that had many young men. Hence, those who benefited from increased demand have been the instructors, in limited supply, not the incumbent schools or the consumers.

In this article, we estimate the structure of costs of hiring, terminating, and retiring employees in France. We use a representative panel data set of French establishments that contains direct measures of these various costs as well as measures of entries and exits for the years 1992 and 1996. First, we show that our panel data source is able to reproduce results obtained by Abowd and Kramarz (2003) when we use the cross-section dimension. Our estimates show that collective terminations are much more expensive than individual terminations: legislation, namely the requirement to set up a “social plan” in case of collective terminations, magnifies firing costs. Collective terminations entail very large fixed costs. Termination costs are essentially linear in the number of terminated workers, with collective terminations being much more expensive. The costs of retirement are concave in the number of retired workers with a fixed cost component which is smaller than the one estimated for terminations, and quite smaller than that obtained by Abowd and Kramarz (2003). Finally, we find that hiring costs are small and seem only present when hiring on CDI; costs of hiring on short-term contracts are almost zero. Finally, the fixed (firm-specific) component of hiring costs is very small.

We provide an assessment of the French ZEP (Zones d’Education Prioritaire), a program started in 1982 that channels additional resources to schools in disadvantaged areas and encourages the development of new teaching projects. Focusing on middle-schools, we first evaluate the impact of the ZEP status on resources, their utilization (teacher bonuses versus teaching hours) and key establishments characteristics such as class sizes, school enrolments, teachers’ qualifications and experience, and student composition and mobility. We then estimate the impact of the ZEP program on four measures of individual student achievement: obtaining at least one diploma by the end of schooling, reaching 8th grade, reaching 10th grade and success at the Baccalaureat (the national examination at the end of high school). We take into account the endogeneity of the ZEP status by using both difference in differences and instrumental variables based on political variables. The results are the same in all cases: there is no impact on student success of the ZEP program.

We use the French Customs files, an exhaustive account of the international trade transactions carried out by firms across the period 1986–1992, to analyze the link between imports, exports, employment, and skill structure of French manufacturing firms. Our data allow us to distinguish between imports of finished goods and imports of intermediate inputs. Our results show that there is a strong correlation between increasing imports, in particular imports of finished goods, and job destruction, most notably destruction of production jobs. Interestingly, the strength of the relation between job destruction and imports is stronger for larger firms. For example, within production jobs, the association between increasing imports of finished goods and destruction of unskilled jobs is only found in large firms. These findings are robust to the introduction of firm-level measures of innovation.

Cet ouvrage se concentre essentiellement sur les formations en charge de doter les jeunes de competences generales et professionnelles mais aussi de leur transmettre des regles de comportement en societe. Il s'interesse egalement aux politiques menees en matiere d'education et de formation pour prevenir et combattre le chomage des jeunes, en proposant une vue d'ensemble des impacts concrets de ces politiques appliquees de l'enfance a l'âge adulte. Chapitre 1: Le chomage des jeunes Indicateurs du chomage des jeunes et des NEET ; chomage des jeunes, niveaux d'etudes et competences acquises ; elements sur la trajectoire professionnelle des NEET ; causes du chomage des jeunes et des NEET ; consequences du chomage des jeunes a court et a long terme Chapitre 2 : Les systemes d'education et de formation face au chomage des jeunes Un acces elargi a l'education pour tous ; des strategies preventives pour les enfants les plus defavorises ; des strategies correctives pour les jeunes defavorises ; recherche d'un premier emploi ; role de la formation professionnelle dans la transition vers l'emploi Chapitre 3 : Zoom sur quelques interventions Pologne, Pays-Bas, Suede et Etats-Unis Chapitre 4 : L'exemple de la France

To illustrate the wide applicability of longitudinal matched employer-employee data, we study the simultaneous determination of worker mobility and wage rates using an econometric model that allows for both individual and firm-level heterogeneity. The model is estimated using longitudinally linked employer–employee data from France. Structural results for mobility show remarkable heterogeneity with both positive and negative duration dependence present in a significant proportion of firms. The average structural returns to seniority are essentially zero, but this result masks enormous heterogeneity with positive seniority returns found in low starting-wage firms.

The long literatures on the determinants of wage rates at the individual level and on the empirical relation between productivity and wage rates intersect when attention is focused on longitudinally linked employer-employee data. We estimate separate statistical components of wage rates associated with the observable individual characteristics, unobservable individual heterogeneity and unobservable employer heterogeneity. We define general human capital as the portable components of the full-time, full-year wage rate. Within each employer in the linked sample, we create employer-aggregates of the general human capital. We then estimate the relation between sales per employee, general human capital, and employer wage heterogeneity using micro data for the employing firms. The results reveal direct statistical links between the productivity outcome (sales/worker) and general human capital, controlling for firm-specific wage rate heterogeneity, which can be interpreted as specific human capital or as part of a firm-specific compensation strategy.

The Econometric Analysis of Crime. A Survey of Recent Research This article surveys the recent econometric literature analyzing the economic causes and consequences of crime. In this survey, we distinguish three types of studies : the ones measuring the statistical relationship between unemployment rates (or wage levels) and crime rates ; the ones evaluating the effects of public policies on crime ; and finally, the studies trying to explain the level and consequences of crime by means of social interactions. In the second part of our article, we present results coming from two recent studies that we have conducted using French macro- and micro-data. Our first study measures the impact of local youth unemployment rate on local crime rates over the last decade. Our second study uses household data collected by INSEE (Paris) to estimate the causal effect of crime on household mobility., Denis Fougère Francis Kramarz Julien Pouget L'analyse économétrique de la délinquance. Une synthèse de résultats récents. L'objet de cet article est de faire le point sur les apports essentiels des travaux économétriques récents consacrés à l'examen statistique des causes économiques et des conséquences de la délinquance. Nous passons en revue trois types de travaux : ceux qui analysent le lien entre la délinquance et la situation du marché du travail ; ceux essayant d'évaluer les effets dissuasifs de la sévérité du dispositif policier et du système judiciaire ; les études qui ont utilisé l'approche par les interactions sociales pour mieux appréhender le niveau et les conséquences de la délinquance. Dans un second temps, nous présentons quelques résultats récents concernant le cas de la France, en ayant auparavant rappelé les potentialités et les limites des données disponibles. Ces résultats proviennent de deux de nos études empiriques. La première se propose d'évaluer l'impact du niveau du taux de chômage des jeunes sur le nombre de délits enregistrés dans les départements français au cours de la dernière décennie. La seconde examine, à l'aide de données collectées par l'Insee, l'effet causal de la délinquance subie par les ménages sur leur mobilité résidentielle., Fougère Denis, Kramarz Francis, Pouget Julien. L'analyse économétrique de la délinquance. Une synthèse de résultats récents. In: Revue française d'économie, volume 19, n°3, 2005. pp. 3-55.

Our study is concerned with the estimation of the causal effect of household victimization on household mobility. More precisely, we analyze both processes (victimization and mobility) by taking into account potential endogeneity of household victimization, but also potential endogeneity of household initial geographical localization. Data that we use come from surveys on household living conditions (enquêtes permanentes sur les conditions de vie des ménages) collected by Insee (Paris) between 1997 and 2002. These data are matched with local environment variables that come from the 1999 French Census and from the 1996 dads (déclarations annuelles de données sociales) data set on wages. Our results show that medium- and high-income households are more likely to move after a burglary or a car theft (i.e. they are more sensitive to property crime), while low-income households are more likely to move when at least one of their members has been assaulted (i.e. they are more sensitive to violent crime).

In this article, we use the structure of French labor law and the data from three linked sources to estimate the costs of hiring, separation and retirement of employees for a representative sample of French establishments matched with a representative sample of their employees. The estimates are computed using data from the Wage Structure Survey (ESS), the Workforce Movement Questionnaire (DMMO), and the Occupational Structure Survey (ESE). We show that the estimated separation costs are increasing and mildly concave functions of the number of exits and include a very large fixed component. Estimated hiring costs are much lower and those associated with short-term contracts are effectively zero. Profit maximizing French firms should adjust employment primarily through hiring changes.

We investigate how Internal Labor Markets (ILMs) allow complex organizations to accommodate positive and negative shocks calling for costly labor adjustments. Adverse shocks affecting one unit in the organization are shown to increase workers' mobility to other units rather than external firms, with stricter employment protection in the adversely hit unit causing an additional increase in internal mobility. The ILM response to adverse shocks is also stronger when the receiving units in the organization are more productive and have a better financing capacity. We also find that affiliated units faced with positive shocks to their growth opportunities rely on the ILM for new hires, especially managers in the top layers of the organization and other high-skilled workers, thus overcoming human capital bottlenecks that may curb growth. ILMs therefore emerge as a co-insurance mechanism within organizations, allowing them to bypass both firing and hiring frictions, and providing job stability to employees as a by-product.

We test for sorting of workers between and within industrial sectors in a directed search model with coordination frictions. We fit the model to sector-specific vacancy and output data along with publicly-available statistics that characterize the distribution of worker and employer wage heterogeneity across sectors. Our empirical method is general and can be applied to a broad class of assignment models. The results indicate that industries are the loci of sorting-more productive workers are employed in more productive industries. The evidence confirms assortative matching can be present even when worker and employer components of wage heterogeneity are weakly correlated.

We study the effects of the attrition of firms from longitudinal samples on the estimates of dynamic labor demand models. The reasons for attrition from business-based longitudinal samples are extremely varied and are related to both the economic activity of the business and the methods of acquiring sampling frame information for those businesses. We do an exhaustive study of the available information regarding the attrition of French firms from our analysis sample. We propose flexible attrition models based on a longitudinal generalization of the missing at random assumption. We implement these models with a weighted generalized method of moments estimator that is consistent and efficient (in the class of moment estimators). Our flexible attrition models substantially alter and improve the estimation results for dynamic factor demand models. We attribute the improvement to the ability of our models to handle the very diverse reasons for attrition that our audit uncovered without requiring specific knowle...

In this article, we study the impact of changes of total labor costs on employment of low-wage workers in France in a period, 1990 to 1998, that saw sudden and large changes in these costs. We use longitudinal data from the French Labor Force survey (« enquete emploi ») in order to understand the consequences of real decreases and real increases of the labor cost. We examine the transition probabilities from employment to non-employment and from non-employment to employment. In particular, we compare the transition probabilities of the workers that were directly affected by the changes (“between” workers) with the transition probabilities of workers closest in the wage distribution to those directly affected (“marginal” workers). In all years with an increasing minimum cost, the “between” group (or the treated using the vocabulary of controlled experiments) comprises all workers whose costs in year t lie between the old (year t) and the new (year t+1) minimum. In all years with a decreasing minimum, the “between” group comprises all workers whose costs in year t+1 lie between the present minimum cost (year t+1) and the old (year t) minimum cost. The results can be summarized as follows. Comparing years of increasing minimum cost and decreasing minimum cost, difference-in-difference estimates imply that an increase of 1% of the cost implies roughly an increase of 1.5% in the probability of transiting from employment to non-employment for the treated workers, the resulting elasticity being −1.5. Second, results for the transitions from non-employment to employment are less clear-cut. Tax subsidies have a small and insignificant impact on entry from non-employment as well as on transitions within the wage distribution. Finally, we show that the “marginal” group constitutes a good control group. In addition, there is no obvious evidence of substitution between the “between” and “marginal” groups of workers, but there is some evidence of substitution between workers within the tax subsidy zone, with wages above those of the “marginal”, and workers outside the subsidy zone.

There has been a recent explosion in the use of linked employer-employee data to study the labor market. This was documented, in part, in our Handbook of Labor Economics chapter (Abowd and Kramarz, 1999a).1 Various new econometric methods have been developed to address the problems raised by integrating longitudinal employer and employee data. We …rst described these methods in Abowd and Kramarz (1999b). In this chapter, we present a survey of these new econometric methods, with a particular emphasis on new developments since our earlier articles. Linked employer-employee data bring together information from both sides of the labor market. They therefore permit, for the …rst time, equilibrium analyses of labor market outcomes. They also allow researchers to investigate the joint role of worker and …rm heterogeneity, both observed and unobserved, on labor market outcomes. Labor economists have taken full advantage of these data to revisit classic questions and to formulate new ones, and much has been learned as a result. For example, Abowd, Kramarz, Lengermann, and Roux (2005) have revisited the classic question of inter-industry wage di¤erentials to determine whether they are attributable to workers or …rms. Abowd, Kramarz, Lengermann, and Perez-Duarte (2003) use linked employer-employee data to examine whether “good”workers are employed by “good”…rms. Dostie (2005) presents new evidence on the returns to seniority and its relation to turnover; and Woodcock (2003) examines the role of heterogeneity and worker-…rm learning on employment and wage dynamics. These applied endeavors have demonstrated the value of linked employer-employee data. They have also spurred

We study the impact of new technologies (NT) on wages and employment using a unique panel that matches data on individuals and on their firms. As found in the United States (Krueger (1993)), we show that computer users are better paid than non-users (between 15% and 20% more). But we also show that these workers were already better compensated before the introduction of the NTs. Total returns to computer use amount to 2%. Even when possible measurement errors are taken into account, total returns cannot exceed 4%, which is far from the cross-section estimates. Furthermore, computer users are protected from job losses as long as bad business conditions do not last too long. This result holds even after controlling for possible selection biases.

We study the impact on New Technologies (NT) on wages using a panel that matches data on individuals and on their firms. In his article on the same topic, Krueger (1993) did not give a definitive answer to the following question: if workers who use NT are better paid, is it because they are abler or because NT increases their productivity. We try to provide an answer to this question. Comparing cross-section estimates and individual fixed-effect estimates, we show that computer-based new technologies are used by abler workers. These workers learn and become more productive when they get more experienced with these NT. In terns of wage differentials, the introduction of computer-based NT contributes to a small increase. The use of firm-level data does not modify these conclusions.

Our descriptive analysis characterizes the changes of wage mobility in France between 1967 and 1987. Mobility has strongly decreased under the period. This result is robust. As in the United States, the probability to remain in each decile has increased, in particular at the bottom end of the distribution. Older cohorts are in a much better situation than younger ones, except for college graduates., Cette étude, essentiellement descriptive, cherche à caractériser les transformations de la mobilité salariale en France entre 1967 et 1987. La forte baisse de cette mobilité constitue notre résultat principal et robuste. Comme aux États-Unis, les probabilités de rester dans le même décile de salaire se sont accrues, particulièrement au bas de la distribution. L'analyse des cohortes successives révèle la situation privilégiée des cohortes les plus anciennes ainsi que la détérioration des positions initiales des cohortes les plus récentes, sauf pour les diplômés de l'enseignement supérieur., Fougère Denis, Kramarz Francis, Buchinsky Moshe. La mobilité salariale en France : 1967-1987. In: Revue économique, volume 49, n°3, 1998. pp. 879-890.

Recent research has emphasized the key importance of the equilibrium allocation of heterogeneous workers into heterogeneous jobs or occupations as a determinant of economic efficiency. Most of the literature on this subject envisions worker (re-)allocation as occurring between employers. Yet, the data suggest that a very large amount of reallocation occurs within firms, in the form of internal promotions or de-motions. We construct a structural job search model with internal and external labor markets. Internal labor markets mediate occupational mobility and wage dynamics within firms, whereas the external labor market organizes any mobility involving an employer change, and related wage dynamics. The aim of this construction is to understand and quantify the role of within-firm reallocation in the assignment process of workers into jobs. The model is estimated on a large-scale matched employer-employee data set covering the entire French business sector.

We study the extent to which the structure of an exporter's portfolio of buyers affects the volatility of its sales, volatility of bilateral exports. In our model, diversifying sales across a larger number of partners reduces the firm's exposure to idiosyncratic demand shocks, thus the volatility of its sales. Being connected with importers that also interact with other sellers creates comovements in sales across sellers. We show that both elements can generate "granular" fluctuations in aggregate exports. Based on highly detailed export data, we show that exporters are little diversified in sales and that trade networks are highly connected across exporters. This participates to explaining the high volatility of bilateral exports in our data.

This article uses variations in local conditions of the activity of the labor courts to assess the effect of dismissal costs on the labor market. Judicial activity is analyzed using a data set of individual labor disputes brought to French courts over the years 1996 to 2003. Several indicators are computed: the percentage of dismissed workers who litigate in employment tribunals, the fraction of cases leading to a conciliation between parties, to a trial, resulting in a workers victory. First, we present a simple theoretical framework helping us understand the links between litigation costs, judicial outcomes and firing costs. Court outcomes are not exogenous to market conditions but also to litigation costs: a large filing rate can come from small litigation costs for the workers, leading to large dismissal costs for the firms; it may well come from small litigation costs for the firms, the employers taking more risks when firing workers. Second, we regress job flows on indicators of judicial outcomes, using an instrument, based on local shocks in the supply of lawyers. We find that when the numbers of lawyers increase, workers litigate more often, which should increase the firing costs for the firms. This increased filing rate causes a decrease in employment fluctuations, especially for shrinking or exiting firms. The effect on employment growth is positive in the short term.

We study the impact on New Technologies (NT) on wages using a unique data set that matches data on individuals and on their firms. In his important article on the same topic, Krueger (1993) did not give a definitive answer to the following question: if workers who use NT are better paid, is it because they are abler or because NT increases their productivity. We try to provide a precise answer to this question. Comparing cross-section estimates, firm effect estimates and person effect estimates, we show that computer-based new technologies are used by abler workers. These workers appear to become more productive when they get more experienced with these NT. In terms of wage differentials, the introduction of computer-based NT contributes to the increase but less than supposed before. Each year, experience with computer-based NT adds around 1% to the wage of workers using such techniques.

Computers : a selection device ? Computer use, wage, and unemployment Using statistical surveys as well as interviews of employed workers, we show the selection effects that were induced by the implementation of computers within firms. These effects are particularly visible on wages - computer users were better paid than non-users (all things equal) before starting to use computers - and on the unemployment probability (lower for users)., L'ordinateur : un outil de sélection ? Utilisation de l'informatique, salaire et risque de chômage À l'aide d'enquêtes statistiques et d'interviews de salariés, nous mettons en évidence les effets de sélection qui sont favorisés par la mise en place de l'informatique dans les entreprises. En particulier, cette sélection se voit sur les salaires - les salariés utilisant l'informatique étaient déjà mieux payés avant de commencer à utiliser cet outil (toutes choses égales d'ailleurs) que les non-utilisateurs -comme sur le risque de tomber au chômage plus faible pour les utilisateurs., Gollac Michel, Kramarz Francis. L'ordinateur : un outil de sélection ? Utilisation de l'informatique, salaire et risque de chômage. In: Revue économique, volume 48, n°5, 1997. pp. 1115-1143.

The authors model a mechanism that makes delegation of authority from a firm to a collective of workers profitable. Power is exchanged for loyalty. The model is tested using a matched panel of French workers and firms. For these firms, the authors know at two dates (1986 and 1992) whether a firm-level agreement has been signed. Furthermore, at these two dates and for each firm, a representative sample of the employees provides information on the individuals. The authors show both theoretically and empirically that the voluntary signature of such an agreement induces lower employee turnover given the structure of wages. Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Press.

In general, when one considers a set of orthogonality conditions, the parameters can be divided into parameters of interest that the econometrician wants to estimate — the coefficient of the lagged endogenous variable in the case of an autoregressive error component (AREC) model, for instance, — and nuisance parameters — most of the second-order terms in an AREC model. We demonstrate that the elimination of such nuisance parameters using their empirical counterpart does not entail an efficiency loss when only the parameters of interest are estimated. Applications of our results to both autoregressive error component models and time-varying individual fixed effects models are discussed at length. They show the nature of the efficiency losses when some orthogonality conditions are left aside.

Firms and In-Service Training by Emmanuel Delame and Francis Kramarz The law of 16 July 1971 provides for firms of at least 10 employees to contribute to financing in-service training. Although the largest and most skilled firms spend more than the legal minimum (1.2% of their payroll in 1987), others pay this sum to the government or specialised organisations without spending anything on training. Between these two extremes are the firms that spend exactly the minimum sum on training. This study examines 495 industrial firms to show the consistency of training patterns over time (those that have trained will train and those that have not trained are unlikely to do so in the future). Only the firms that train a great deal play their game well with higher profit and increased productivity for the skilled worker., Entreprises et la formation continue par Emmanuel Delame et Francis Kramarz La loi du 16 juillet 1971 institue la participation des entreprises d'au moins 10 salariés au financement de la formation continue. Si des entreprises (les plus grandes et les plus qualifiées) dépensent plus que le minimum légal ( 1 ,2 % de leur masse salariale en 1 987), d'autres versent cette somme à l'État ou à des organismes spécialisés sans former. Entre deux, il existe des entreprises qui forment en dépensant juste la somme minimale. Cette étude, réalisée à partir de 495 entreprises industrielles, montre la constance des comportements de formation dans le temps (qui a formé formera, qui n'a formé a peu de chance de le faire un jour). Seules les entreprises très formatrices tirent leur épingle du jeu avec un meilleur profit et une productivité accrue pour le qualifié., Delame Emmanuel, Kramarz Francis. Entreprises et formation continue. In: Économie & prévision, n°127, 1997-1. pp. 63-82.

To understand how groups coordinate, we study infinitely repeated N-player coordination games in the context of strategic uncertainty. In a situation where players share no common language or culture, ambiguity is always present. However, finding an adequate principle for a common language is not easy: a tradeoff between simplicity and efficiency has to be made. All these points are illustrated on repeated N-player coordination games on m loci. In particular, we demonstrate how a common principle can accelerate coordination. We present very simple rules that are optimal in the space of all languages for m (number of coordination loci) from 2 to 5 and for all N, the number of players. We also show that when more memory is used in the language (strategies), players may not coordinate, whereas this is never the case when players remember only the previous period.

This paper examines the evolution of the wage structure in France after 1984. Our data come from two matched employer-employee wage surveys performed in 1986 and 1992. So, we have two cross-sections of establishments and individuals. A subsample of establishments present in both surveys allows us to analyse time-variations. We find that the wage inequality increased between 1986 and 1992, which seems to be, in large part, explained by the evolution of employer-specific compensation policies. We analyse the role of employer characteristics in this evolution. We also show that between-plant specialization dramatically increased during the period in all dimensions. Finally, we observe that the evolutions of employer-specific wage policies are correlated with changes of the workforce in terms of experience and seniority.

We study the relation between product quality and worker quality using an economic model that, under certain conditions, provides a direct link between product price, product quality and work force quality. Our measures of product quality are the evolution in the detailed product price relative to its product group and the level of the product price relative to this group. Our worker quality measures are the firm's average person effect and personal characteristics effect from individual wage rates. We find a very weak, generally positive, relation between worker quality and product quality using detailed firm-level data from the French Producer Price Index surveys.