Subsidizing extra jobs: promoting employment by taming the unions
研究了一种不对称的就业补贴方案，即只奖励企业增加就业而不惩罚裁员，发现这能抑制工会的工资要求，从而促进就业和福利，但过高的补贴率可能导致企业萎缩。
We study the subsidization of extra jobs in a general equilibrium framework. While the previous literature focuses on symmetric marginal employment subsidies where firms are rewarded when they increase employment but punished when they reduce their workforce, we consider an asymmetric scheme that only rewards employment expansion. This changes the incidence substantially. In the asymmetric case without punishment, it becomes less costly for firms to lay off a substantial fraction of their workforce when trade unions raise wages. This tames the unions, which causes wage moderation and raises aggregate employment and welfare. For moderate subsidy rates, all unions prefer to restrain their wage claims. At sufficiently high subsidy rates, labour market conditions improve so much that some unions enforce higher wages and let their firms shrink. This displacement of firms might have a negative impact on employment and welfare. Copyright 2013 Oxford University Press 2012 All rights reserved, Oxford University Press.