Did the pattern of aggregate employment growth change in the euro area in the late 1990s?

Gilles Mourre

Applied Economics, 2006, vol. 38, issue 15, 1783-1807

Abstract: This paper examines whether the pattern of growth in euro area employment seen in the period 1997 to 2001 differs from that recorded in the past and what could be the reasons. First, a standard employment equation is estimated for the euro area as a whole. This shows that the lagged impact of both output growth and real labour cost growth, together with a productivity trend and employment 'inertia', can account for most of the employment developments between 1970 and the early 1990s. Conversely, these traditional determinants can only explain part of the employment development seen in recent years (1997 to 2001). Second, the paper shows sound evidence of a structural break in the aggregate employment equation in the late 1990s. Third, the paper provides some tentative explanations for this change in aggregate employment developments, using in particular country panels of institutional variables and of active labour market policies but also cross-sectional analyses. Among the relevant factors likely to have contributed to rising aggregate employment in recent years are changes in the sectoral composition of euro area employment, the strong development of part-time jobs, lower labour tax rates and possibly less stringent employment protection legislation and greater subsidies to private employment.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840500427072 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Did the pattern of aggregate employment growth change in the euro area in the late 1990s? (2004)
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:taf:applec:v:38:y:2006:i:15:p:1783-1807

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840500427072

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().