Relaxation of employment protection and its effects on labour reallocation

Liina Malk ()

No wp2013-4, Bank of Estonia Working Papers from Bank of Estonia

Abstract: Flexibility of employment protection is considered to be essential for rapid adjustments in the workforce to changing economic conditions and for the reallocation of labour towards more productive activities. This was one of the main arguments for the new Employment Contracts Act in Estonia, which eased employment protection by reducing the costs of terminating employment relationships. Since such substantial changes in employment protection legislation (EPL) are quite rare, this reform provides a good chance to examine the outcomes of the relaxation of employment protection. This paper evaluates the effects of this institutional change on labour reallocation. Exploiting the microdata of the Labour Force Surveys for the years 2007–2011, we analyse worker flows and employ the difference in differences approach to identify the effects of the EPL reform, using Lithuanians as a control group for Estonians. Subsequent to the reform, labour flows out of and into employment increased in Estonia relative to Lithuania. However, from the regression analysis, a statistically significant impact of the EPL reform was identified only on the former of these two types of flows. Both the assessment of aggregate flows and the estimation of difference in differences effects for transition probabilities indicate that the reform of employment protection resulted in lower job-to-job flows while the overall effect on labour reallocation was positive.

Keywords: employment protection legislation; labour reallocation; policy evaluation; difference in differences estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J60 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-06-04, Revised 2013-06-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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