Asymmetric Adjustment Costs in Non-linear labour Demand Models for the Netherlands and U.K. Manufacturing Sectors
研究企业在不确定性和非对称劳动力调整成本下，对生产工人和非生产工人的最优劳动力需求，发现雇佣和解雇成本的不对称性导致劳动力需求在商业周期上下行阶段的不平衡。
The costs of hiring a worker generally differ in size from the firing costs. This article investigates optimal labour demand schedules for production and non-production workers of firms that operate under uncertainty and face asymmetric costs of adjusting their workforce. In the empirical part generalised methods of moments (GMM) estimates of the structural parameters of the Euler conditions for production and non-production workers are presented, together with specification and structural stability tests, using time series data of the Netherlands and U.K. manufacturing sectors. We find that asymmetric adjustment costs play an important role in the explanation of unbalanced labour demand between upward and downward movements of the business cycle. Moreover, hiring costs exceed firing costs of production workers, whereas firing costs exceed hiring costs of non-production workers.