Where did they go? Modelling transitions out of jobs

We study individual job separations and their associated destination states for all individuals in the private sector in Denmark for the period 1980 to 2000, and account for their magnitude and cyclical flows. One finding is that individual and workplace characteristics as well as business cycle effects determine the individual behaviour. In policy simulations the consequences for individual labour market transitions are analysed. We find that structural and growth policies have different consequences for the economy due to the way they change workers' incentives. Policy interventions targeting displaced workers coming from plant closures are argued to be inefficient.