How elastic is the demand for labour in Belgian enterprises? Results from firm level accounts data, 1987-1994

Jozef Konings; Filip Roodhooft

doi:10.1023/A:1002994205321

How elastic is the demand for labour in Belgian enterprises? Results from firm level accounts data, 1987-1994

Jozef Konings, Filip Roodhooft

Economics Department

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper analyzes wage elasticities using a panel dataset of 2800 large Belgian firms over the period 1987-1994. We explore various functional forms and find that the short-run wage elasticity varies between -0.37 and -0.65, while the long-run elasticity is robustly estimated to be larger than 1 in absolute value. These results are striking for they are much higher than those reported in previous studies using macroeconomic time-series data. This suggests that labour costs are more important in determining the demand for labour than initially was believed.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	229-241
Number of pages	13
Journal	Economist
Volume	145
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1002994205321
Publication status	Published - Jan 1 1997

Keywords

Jobs
Labour demand
Wage elasticities
Wages

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

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How elastic is the demand for labour in Belgian enterprises? Results from firm level accounts data, 1987-1994

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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