Three features of real‐life reforms of dual employment protection legislation (EPL) systems are particularly hard to study through the lens of standard labor‐market search models: (i) the excess job turnover implied by dual EPL, (ii) the nonretroactive nature of EPL reforms, and (iii) the transition dynamics from dual to a unified EPL system. In this paper, we develop a computationally tractable model addressing these issues. Our main finding is that the welfare gains of reforming a dual EPL system are sizeable and achieved mostly through a decrease in turnover at short job tenures. This conclusion continues to hold in more general settings featuring wage rigidities, heterogeneity in productivity upon matching, and human capital accumulation. We also find substantial cross‐sectional heterogeneity in welfare effects along the transition to a unified EPL scheme. Given that the model is calibrated to data from Spain, often considered as the epitome of a labor market with dual EPL, our results should provide guidance for a wide range of reforms of dual EPL systems.

中文翻译：

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从双重就业保护到统一就业保护：过渡与稳定

很难通过标准劳动力市场搜索模型的视角来研究双重就业保护立法（EPL）系统的现实生活改革的三个特征：（i）双重EPL隐含的过多工作流失；（ii）非追溯性EPL改革；以及（iii）从双重到统一EPL系统的过渡动力。在本文中，我们开发了解决这些问题的易于计算的模型。我们的主要发现是，改革双重EPL系统的福利收益是可观的，并且主要是通过减少短期任职期间的营业额来实现的。这个结论在更普遍的情况下仍然成立，这些条件包括工资刚性，匹配时生产率的异质性和人力资本积累。我们还发现，在向统一的EPL计划过渡时，福利效应存在显着的横截面异质性。鉴于该模型已根据来自西班牙的数据进行了校准，通常被视为双重EPL劳动力市场的缩影，我们的结果应为广泛的双重EPL系统改革提供指导。