The unemployment impact of product and labour market regulation: Evidence from European countries

Céline Piton ()
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Céline Piton: Economics and Research Department, National Bank of Belgium and PhD candidate at the ULB

No 343, Working Paper Research from National Bank of Belgium

Abstract: This paper provides a robust estimation of the impact of both product and labour market regulations on unemployment using data for 24 European countries over the period 1998-2013. Controlling for country-fixed effects, endogeneity and various covariates, results show that product market deregulation overall reduces unemployment rate. This finding is robust to all specifications and in line with theoretical predictions. However, not all types of reforms have the same effect: deregulation of State controls and in particular involvement in business operations tends to push up the unemployment rate. Labour market deregulation, proxied by the employment protection legislation index, is detrimental to unemployment in the short run while a positive impact (i.e. a reduction of the unemployment rate) occurs only in the long run. Analysis by sub-indicators shows that reducing protection against collective dismissals helps in reducing the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate equation is also estimated for different categories of workers. While men and women are equally affected by product and labour market deregulations, workers distinguished by age and by educational attainment are affected differently. In terms of employment protection, young workers are almost twice as strongly affected as older workers. Regarding product market deregulation, highly-educated individuals are less impacted than low- and middle-educated workers.

Keywords: unemployment; Structural reform; Product market; labour market; regulation; employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E60 J48 J64 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbb:reswpp:201806-343

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