Abstract We explore the impact of wage adjustment on employment with a focus on the role of downward nominal wage rigidities. We use a harmonised survey dataset, which covers 25 European countries in the period 2010–2013. These data are particularly useful for this paper given the firm-level information on the change in economic conditions and collective pay agreements. Our findings confirm the presence of wage rigidities in Europe: first, collective pay agreements reduce the probability of downward wage adjustment; second, wage responses to demand developments are asymmetric with a weaker downward response. Estimation results show that a wage reduction significantly lowers the probability of a decrease in employment at the firm level when demand falls and thereby point to a negative effect of downward wage rigidities on employment at the firm level.

中文翻译：

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欧洲公司工资调整和就业不对称

摘要我们探讨了工资调整对就业的影响，重点是名义工资刚性下降的作用。我们使用统一的调查数据集，涵盖2010-2013年期间的25个欧洲国家。考虑到企业层面有关经济状况和集体薪酬协议变化的信息，这些数据对于本文特别有用。我们的发现证实了欧洲存在工资刚性的问题：首先，集体工资协议降低了工资向下调整的可能性；第二，工资对需求发展的反应是不对称的，向下反应较弱。