The Short-Time Compensation Program in France: An Efficient Measure against Redundancies?

The short-time compensation (STC) program aims at avoiding redundancies in case of shortterm downturns. This paper investigates the relationship between the STC recourse and establishment redundancy behaviour over the period 1996-2004. We test panel data models with sample selection, endogenous explanatory variable and unobserved heterogeneity developed by Semykina and Wooldridge (2007). We work with an unbalanced panel which results from the matching of five administrative databases. Our panel includes more than 36,000 establishments with at least 50 employees and 204,000 observations. According to our results, the participation in the STC program does not protect from redundancies