Henry Redondo

Research

Publications

1. Escaping Temporary Traps? Evidence from Age-Based Incentives to Permanent Employment

   With Ferran Elias · Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

   In 1997 Spain cut non-wage labor costs on permanent contracts for workers under 30 and over 45. We use the age cutoffs of this reform to estimate how targeted hiring subsidies change the contracts firms offer and what this means for workers' subsequent careers.

   Journal version Working paper (PDF)

Working Papers

1. Unequal Opportunities: Worker Adjustment after a Sectoral Collapse

   Previously circulated as “From Bricklayers to Waiters: Reallocation in a Deep Recession”

   When Spanish construction collapsed in 2007–2012, some displaced workers found new jobs and others did not. I build a reallocation index that measures how well each worker's prior skills match the jobs that survived in their local labor market. Moving from the bottom to the top of the index reduces cumulative employment losses by 34%, with no effect on reemployment wages. The gradient is mostly within provinces, so what matters is the fit between a worker and a market, not the worker or the place alone.

   PDF

2. Quasi-Random Matches: Evidence from Dual Labor Markets

   With María Castellanos and Jan Stuhler

   Workers on permanent contracts differ from those on temporary ones in ways that are hard to observe. We exploit the timing of when a worker's temporary contract expires, relative to how many permanent contracts are being created in their province at that moment, to get quasi-random variation in who lands a permanent job. We use it to estimate the causal effect of a permanent contract on workers' careers.

   PDF

Work in Progress

1. Moving without Settling: Employment Instability and the Persistence of Internal Migration

   Flexible labor markets generate a lot of geographic mobility, but do the moves last? Using Spanish social security records from 1995 to 2021, I compare recent movers and comparable locals after the same kind of job separation to measure how job instability shortens migration spells.

2. Returns to Formal Sector Experience: Is It About You or Where You Worked?

   With Julián Messina, Santiago Reyes and Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano

   How much is a year of formal-sector experience worth? Using Brazilian matched employer–employee data (RAIS), we estimate returns to experience while accounting for workers' endogenous moves across firms and jobs.

3. The Power of Words: Economic Conditions, Political Discourse, and Support for Populism

   With Agustina Martínez-Pozo and Luis Menéndez

   Do parties shape which issues citizens consider important, and does it matter electorally? We show how Vox tailors what it talks about, and how, to local economic conditions, and study whether this discourse shifts voters' priorities and builds into votes.