[6] The research interests of Francis Kramarz include labour economics, microeconometrics, matched employer-employee data sets, and the analysis of firms and workers in international trade.
Comparing the United States, Canada and France, Kramarz, David Card and Thomas Lemieux observe that the relative wages of less-skilled workers fell less during the 1980s in those countries with the most rigid labour market institutions, though these wage inflexibilities aren't found to explain the differences between the countries' relative employment growth.
[14] Moreover, with Abowd and Patrick Corbel, Kramarz finds that for each job created in the French private sector in a given year, three persons are hired and two job separations occur, whereas for each job destroyed, two separations occur yet only one hiring, with effects in both cases persisting even when controlling for skill group and the bulk of these worker flows are associated with short-term contracts; thus, employment adjustments in the private sector are made primarily by changing their hiring and not through changes in separations.
[15] Abowd and Kramarz also find that separation costs in France are degressively increasing in the number of exits, though with a large fixed component, whereas hiring costs are much lower and essentially zero for short-term contracts, driving French firms to adjust employment primarily through increases and decreases in hiring.
[19] Finally, in an extensive study of the role of social networks with regard to youth labour market entries in Sweden with Oskar Nordström Skans, he finds that strong social ties (e.g. parents) are an important determinants for where young workers find their first job, especially for "weak" graduates in times of high unemployment or for graduates whose parents have good jobs or work in particularly productive establishments; overall, strong social ties benefit youth in terms of faster and better school-to-work transitions, including longer job match durations for their first jobs and better wage growth; by contrast, firms benefit due to such youths relatively lower entry wages and a strong drop in their parents' wage growth.
[22] Finally, in research with Thomas Philippon, Kramarz observes that French payroll tax subsidies appear to induce substitution between those earning the minimum wage or slightly more and receiving the subsidy and those who don't, even if the latter have slightly lower wages; essentially, a 1% increase in labour costs increases the likelihood of employees' loss of employment by 1.5%.