Firing Costs and Business Cycle Fluctuations

Abstract

This article considers a real business cycle model with establishment level dynamics and uses it to analyze the effects of firing taxes. It finds that firing taxes can have significant consequences on business cycle fluctuations, that the largest effects are on aggregate employment, and that even relatively small firing taxes have substantial effects. A significant contribution of the article is computational: It describes how to use standard linear-quadratic methods to solve for a stochastic equilibrium of an economy with tax distortions.