ZYLBERBERG Andre

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This article examines the implications of the efficiency wage theory for wage rigidity and employment volume. This theory is based on the existence of a link between the level of the wage and the productivity of labor. In this case, the optimal level of the wage has no reason to correspond to its Walrasian level, leading in most cases to an excess of supply on the labor market. In equilibrium, the wage is downwardly rigid despite the existence of a positive level of unemployment. We begin by identifying the main implications of the wage-productivity relationship, and then consider the strategic foundations of the efficiency wage. We then show how wage rigidity associated with an unemployment buffer can play the role of an incentive mechanism when firms only imperfectly observe the performance of their employees. Finally, we attempt to link the efficiency wage theory to dualist representations of the labor market.

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"French youth is cut in two, some get by and others don't. Why is this so? This divide is the result of an elitist social system where school and the job market serve as sorting machines. The result: the weakest are relentlessly eliminated. Left out, they tend to desert the ballot box and deny the foundations of democracy. This severe diagnosis established by the authors in the two previous editions of "La machine à trier" is unfortunately the same: the situation of French youth has still not improved. This new, completely updated edition confirms the persistent difficulties of youth, refutes the idea of a common destiny for a generation and proposes a radical revision of our elitist integration model. [Source: 4th cover].

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The back cover states: "Miracle cures such as lower taxes, increased public spending, a halt to immigration, a 32-hour work week, the reindustrialization of territories, or the taxation of financial transactions are supposed to cure us of all our ills without cost. These untruths, repeated over and over again by the media, have a name: economic negationism. At the origin of strategic choices, it impoverishes us and results in millions of unemployed. Nowadays, one cannot assert everything and its opposite, because economics has become an experimental science based on a rigorous analysis of facts. This unknown revolution produces knowledge that often clashes with the beliefs and interests of big business, trade unionists, intellectuals and politicians. They do everything to sow doubt, even about the most established truths. The purpose of this book is to expose economic negationism. To stop wasting our time with debates that have already been decided and not to let ourselves be fooled by impostures and demagogy".

Revised and updated by the authors, this book sheds new light on how the labor market works, how to think about unemployment, and the policies to combat it. No, unemployment is not an inevitability linked to globalization and financial capitalism. No, a good salary is not always the enemy of employment. No, legislation on layoffs does not protect employment. No, training is not the remedy for all the ills of the unemployed. This is what the most recent research conducted in France and in many other countries has taught us. We have not "tried everything" to fight unemployment. Far from it. This book tracks down the enemies of employment and tells us how to bring them down. When it was first published in 2004, under the title Le Chômage, fatalité ou nécessité, the book received unanimous critical acclaim and was awarded the Prix Mutations et Travail, the Prix Européen du Livre d'Economie, the Manpower Prize for Human Resources Books in 2005, and the Zerilli-Marimo Prize of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 2006.

The back cover states: "Revised and updated by the authors, this book sheds new light on the functioning of the labor market, on how to think about unemployment and on the policies to combat it. No, unemployment is not an inevitability linked to globalization and financial capitalism. No, a good salary is not always the enemy of employment. No, legislation on layoffs does not protect employment. No, training is not the remedy for all the ills of the unemployed. This is what the most recent research conducted in France and in many other countries has taught us. We have not "tried everything" to fight unemployment. Far from it. This book tracks down the enemies of employment and tells us how to bring them down".

This survey highlights the key results of the empirical literature concerning the costs of flexibility enhancing reforms in product and labour markets. The documented costs include reduced employment, loss of government revenue, undesirable distributional consequences and political instability. The literature suggests that: i) once implemented, product and labour market reforms affect prices and quantities quite rapidly. ii) there are no major differences between the overall effects in the short and long run. iii) the costs of reforms are very much related to interactions with other policies and institutions. and iv) the costs of reforms change over the business cycle.

We first propose some new empirical evidence on the fact that the labor market conditions matter for the retirement decision at the individual level: we investigate whether unemployed workers retire before employed workers, other things being equal. Our main objective in this paper is then to propose an equilibrium unemployment approach to retirement decisions that allows us to derive the positive and normative features of retirement decisions when search and matching frictions are considered. Two main conclusions emerge: the retirement decision of unemployed workers depends on the labor-market frictions whereas that of employed workers does not. the existence of search externalities makes the retirement age of unemployed workers intrinsically suboptimal. Considering Social Security policy issues, we show that the complete elimination of the implicit tax on continued activity is not necessarily welfare-optimizing in a second best world where the labor market equilibrium suffers from distortions.

The 4th cover.

This landmark textbook published by The MIT Press combines depth and breadth of coverage with recent, cutting-edge work in all the major areas of modern labor economics. Its command of the literature and its coverage of the latest theoretical, methodological, and empirical developments make it also a valuable resource for practicing labor economists. This second edition has been substantially updated and augmented. It devotes more space to the analysis of public policy and the levers available to policy makers, with new chapters on such topics as discrimination, globalization, income redistribution, employment protection, and the minimum wage or labor market programs for the unemployed. Theories are explained on the basis of the simplest possible models, which are in turn related to empirical results. Mathematical appendixes provide a toolkit for understanding the models. The book incorporates examples drawn from many countries, and it presents empirical methods using contributions that have proved to be milestones in labor economics. The data and codes of these research publications, as well as numerous tables and figures (with corresponding data and do files) describing the functioning of labor markets, are all available on this website along with slides that can be used as course aids. For each chapter, we provide 3 sets of slides (with pdf, tex files and figures). A «basic» set, that can be used to teach the basics of the chapter to undergraduate students. an «advanced» set, with more advanced material for graduate students. and a «complete» set that you can use to elaborate your own courses. There are also slides provided by users of Labor Economics. (Publisher's abstract).

There is a French paradox: private happiness and public unhappiness. While the French say they are relatively satisfied with their private lives and with family and community solidarity, they express a great deal of mistrust towards the rest of society. They regularly declare themselves more pessimistic about their collective destiny and their taste for living together than citizens of other developed countries. How can such pessimism be explained in a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world? Recent research in the social sciences, economics and medicine on the causes of well-being provides a convincing and well-founded answer: well-being depends above all on the quality of social relations. However, the French suffer from a profound lack of cooperation and reciprocity. They distrust others, but also their institutions, justice, parliament, trade unions, or even companies, competition and the market, much more often than citizens of most other developed countries. They also say they suffer from conflictual and hierarchical relationships, whether at school, in their companies, or in their relationship with public institutions. This mistrust has a considerable economic and human cost (.).

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French youth is cut in two, some make it, others don't. This divide is the result of an elitist social system where school and the labor market serve as sorting machines. In the end, the weakest are relentlessly eliminated, while being practically excluded from social assistance until the age of 25. Left out, they tend to desert the ballot box and deny the foundations of democracy. It is urgent to attack the roots of the problem: school failure and the insurmountable obstacles that the job market puts in front of those who do not have a diploma. We must also break down the barriers of our political system so that young people can find their place in it. But in the meantime, we can't leave so many young people on the sidelines. There are ways to give them a second chance without being lax. If we continue to do nothing, the risk of a deflagration of the republican pact will grow day by day. (Editor's summary).

The 4th cover states: "French youth is split in two, some make it, others don't. This split is the result of an elitist social system where school and the job market serve as sorting machines. This divide is the result of an elitist social system where school and the job market serve as sorting machines. In the end, the weakest are relentlessly eliminated, while being practically excluded from social assistance until the age of 25. Left out, they tend to desert the ballot box and deny the foundations of democracy. It is urgent to attack the roots of the problem: school failure and the insurmountable obstacles that the job market puts in front of those who do not have a diploma. We must also break down the barriers of our political system so that young people can find their place in it. But in the meantime, we can't leave so many young people on the sidelines. There are ways to give them a second chance without being lax. If we continue to do nothing, the risk of the republican pact exploding will increase day by day".

"Hierarchy, inequality and mistrust" is the real motto of French society, according to the authors. Excessively hierarchical, elitist, conflictual, the organization of society undermines social relations, confidence in the future and growth. However, the decline is not inevitable. They evoke certain reforms carried out abroad, offering other paths.

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The objective of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the stakes of employee savings for compensation policies in French companies. A historical and theoretical perspective first allows us to identify the motivations leading companies to develop a system combining profit-sharing and employee savings plans. Then, through a theoretical model of the "Principal-Agent" type, we explain the characteristics of a contract combining profit-sharing with a PEE. The resulting theoretical predictions are finally validated by an empirical study on individual company and employee data. Based on a propensity score matching estimation, the results reveal that companies that integrate a profit-sharing scheme into their compensation policies pay lower base salaries on average, compensated by the payment of a profit-sharing bonus. Moreover, the latter has a positive and significant impact on profit, but a non-significant effect on the companies' labor productivity. Nevertheless, there is a positive correlation between the implementation of the scheme and labor productivity, which may be due to a selection effect. This work leads us to defend the thesis that the introduction by firms of a scheme combining profit-sharing and the PEE is aimed not only at incentive effects but also at controlling labor costs. Moreover, when the PEE gives rise to employee shareholding, it enables companies to pursue capital stabilization objectives.

The main objective of unemployment insurance is to provide a decent income in case of job loss. But this very narrow conception of unemployment insurance has perverse effects if it does not allow for assistance and an incentive to search for work, notably because of the problem of moral hazard. The control of this search and the placement of job seekers are two functions inherent to unemployment compensation. They reinforce the missions of the unemployment insurance system by giving priority to the return to employment. This thesis aims to better understand the effects of unemployment compensation on job search efficiency. How do control systems modify the search behavior of the unemployed? How does the organization of job placement affect their job search? Job search control systems accompanied by sanctions modify the optimal unemployment insurance contract: high unemployment benefits, by increasing the penalty an unemployed person faces for not searching, provide an incentive to search. However, we show that excessive or misdirected controlJe can harm the job search of the unemployed and degrade the average quality of jobs. The activity of placing the unemployed is closely linked to unemployment compensation. The presence of many placement operators contributes to a better efficiency of the job search for the unemployed: the costs of the job search are reduced and the return to work rates are higher. Nevertheless, the use of private operators raises problems, particularly with regard to the treatment of low-skilled workers.

The rise of employment policies in European labor markets over the past 25 years has been the subject of much analysis and debate. In this thesis, we consider these policies in terms of their complementarities. This notion is defined as the fact that two employment policies are complementary if the result of their joint action is superior to that of their isolated action. We focus in particular on highlighting these interactions, their consequences on the labor market in terms of employment, unemployment, wages and welfare. Particular attention is paid to the sources of possible complementarities and to their transmission channels. The first part is situated in a simple framework of labor supply and demand, in order to provide a first study of the impact of employment policies and their interactions. It also allows us to take stock of a certain number of empirical works. A second part then turns to an equilibrium approach. The latter is carried out in a matching model and allows for a more in-depth analysis of the complementarities of employment policies. This section focuses on tax and unemployment compensation policies. The third part extends the analysis to employment protection and its interactions with other employment policies on the one hand, and the macroeconomic environment on the other. In sum, this thesis aims to show that the effectiveness and consequences of an employment policy are likely to vary greatly according to the characteristics of the labor market and the other policies implemented.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze, both at the level of agents' behavior and at the macroeconomic level, the implications of a compensation system based on profit sharing. Chapter 1 is devoted to the analysis of the firm's behavior in a sharing situation. Chapter 2 first extends the study of the consequences of sharing on the decisions of decentralized agents, by integrating it into contemporary analyses of the labor market (theory of wage bargaining, implicit contracts, the efficiency wage). It then examines its strategic properties within a duopoly model of the industry. Chapters 3 and 4 attempt to assess the incentive qualities of the usual wage system and profit sharing. Their main objective is to identify the conditions under which the introduction of a sharing formula could increase productivity. Finally, the last two chapters analyze the macroeconomic properties of the sharing economy by comparing them to those of the wage economy.

The matching theory aims to account for the processes of encounter and association between unemployed job seekers and firms that hold vacant jobs. It allows us to explain the equilibrium unemployment rate as a function of the parameters of the economy. Individuals entering the labor market find a job after a period of unemployment, but in the meantime others have become unemployed. It is this flow of new unemployed and the time required to find a job that gives a still positive level of unemployment. Within this framework, it is possible to study different problems resulting from the heterogeneity of individual characteristics and behaviors of agents. Similarly, the level of qualification has a significant influence on the career path of workers. The choice of agents present on the labor market to remain employed or to create a firm influences the level of employment. Indeed, a high level of unemployment may result from insufficient firm creation.