Government Size and Unemployment: Evidence from Industrial Countries

Horst Feldmann

Public Choice, 2006, vol. 127, issue 3, 443-459

Abstract: Using data from 19 industrial countries for the period 1985 to 2002, this paper analyzes how the size of the government sector affects unemployment. Controlling for the impact of the business cycle as well as for the impact of all major labor market institutions and unobserved country effects, we find that a large government sector is likely to increase unemployment. It appears to have a particularly detrimental effect on women and the low skilled and to substantially increase long-term unemployment. It seems that dominant stateowned enterprises, a large share of public investment in total investment as well as high top marginal income tax rates and low income threshold levels at which they apply are particularly detrimental. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-005-9003-y (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:127:y:2006:i:3:p:443-459

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-005-9003-y

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().