The Spanish Productivity Puzzle in the Great Recession

Laura Hospido and Eva Moreno-Galbis ()
Additional contact information
Eva Moreno-Galbis: Université d'Angers
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Eva Moreno Galbis

No 8891, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: While Spain had traditionally under-performed its European counterparts in terms of labor productivity, the trend is reversed after 2007. The evolution of aggregate productivity in Spain during the Great Recession largely responds to the adverse conditions in the labor market, but not only. Using a longitudinal sample of Spanish manufacturing and services companies between 1995 and 2012, we show that the recent increase in Spanish aggregate productivity also responds to the evolution of the total factor productivity (TFP) and to composition effects. By combining the information at the firm level on balance sheet items, collective agreements and imports-exports, we are able to establish that commitment to a collective agreement at the firm level and access to external markets are positively related to TFP performance during the whole period. In addition, we estimate that firm TFP was negatively correlated with the share of temporary workers during the expansion period, 1995-2007, whereas the sign of that correlation reversed completely during the crisis, 2008-2012. Finally, we relate this sign reversal with the changing composition of temporary workers in the labor market.

Keywords: collective agreements; temporary workers; TFP; labor productivity; exporting firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J24 J52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eff and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published - published in: P. Askenazy, L. Bellmann, A. Bryson, and E. Moreno Galbis (eds.), Productivity Puzzles Across Europe, Oxford University Press, 2016

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Spanish productivity puzzle in the Great Recession (2015)
Working Paper: The Spanish Productivity Puzzle in the Great Recession (2015)
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