Not in My Community: Social Pressure and the Geography of Dismissals
利用法国雇主-雇员匹配数据，研究发现企业总部附近的分支机构解雇率更低，表明当地社区的社会压力抑制了企业裁员行为。
There is growing evidence that social pressure shapes firms' behavior. Given how sensitive communitiesare to downsizing, this suggests that firms are likely to be under strong social pressure when considering reducing employment. Using French linked employer-employee data, we show that social pressure induces firms torefrain from dismissing at short distance from their headquarters. More specifically, we find that, within firms, secondary establishments located further away fromheadquarters have higher dismissal rates than thoselocated closer, taking into account the possible endogeneity of plant location. We also find that the positive effect of distance on dismissals increases with the visibility of the firm in the local community of its headquarters. This effect is also stronger the greater the degree of selfishness of the community in which the headquarters are located. This suggests that local social pressure at headquarters is a key determinant of the positiverelationship between distance to headquarters and dismissals. We show that our results cannot be entirely accounted for by alternative explanations of the distance-dismissal relationship that are put forward in the literature.