| Author Name | TAKIZAWA Miho (Toyo University) /TSURU Kotaro (Faculty Fellow, RIETI) /HOSONO Kaoru (Gakushuin University) |
|---|---|
| Creation Date/NO. | February 2014 14-J-012 |
| Research Project | Reform of Labor Market Institutions |
| Download / Links |
Abstract
This paper examines the effect of negative demand shocks on the labor composition of firms, focusing on the change in the ratio of temporary agency workers to all workers.
To distinguish a causal link from product demands to employee composition from the reverse causation, we used the global financial crisis of 2008-09 as a natural experiment of demand shocks on exporting firms in Japan and analyzed their changes in employee composition.
We find that firms with a higher exporting ratio, a higher temporary agency worker ratio, and a larger increase of temporary agency worker ratio before the crisis decreased their temporary agency worker ratio to a greater extent after the crisis. We also find that firms with a higher liquidity to asset ratio and a larger volatility in changes in sales decreased the temporary agency worker ratio to a lesser extent after the crisis. These results suggest that temporary agency workers serve as a buffer to demand shocks.
The English version of this paper is 14-E-046.
