Université de Lausanne
Ecole des HEC
Département d'économétrie et d'économie politique

SEMINAIRE BROWNBAG

Wednesday May 7, 2008, 12:00
Extranef, room 126

Jean-Philippe WÜLLRICH
(University of Zürich)

Do Financial Incentives for Firms Promote Employment of Disabled Workers?
A Regression Discontinuity Approach

Abstract
The Austrian Disabilities Act obliges firms to hire one severely disabled per 25 non-disabled workers. Non-compliance with these rules leads to a monthly tax of 209 Euros (roughly 10 percent of the median wage). This creates strong financial incentives for firms to hire disabled workers. We evaluate the causal effect of this hiring obligation using a regression discontinuity design. The magnitude of our estimates indicates that 12 percent of disabled workers are employed as a result of the hiring obligation of the Disabilities Act.

Web site of the seminar (with paper online): http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/evenements-english/e-sem-all-2007-08.htm

eptembre 2007, 12h15
Internef, salle 123

Francesco FURLANETTO
(CREI, Barcelona and Norges Bank, Oslo)

Rule-of-thumb Consumers
and the Business Cycle

Abstract

In this paper we study the transmission mechanism of productivity shocks in a model with rule-of-thumb consumers. In the literature, this financial friction has been studied only with reference to fiscal shocks. As a consistency exercise we show that the presence of rule-of-thumb consumers is very helpful also in accounting for recent influential empirical evidence on productivity shocks. Rule-of-thumb agents, together with nominal and real rigidities, play an important role in explaining the negative reponse of hours and the zero reponses of output and consumption after a productivity shock.

Site web du séminaire (avec texte en ligne): http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/evenements/Brownbag2007-08.htm