The Spanish productivity puzzle in the Great Recession

Laura Hospido and Eva Moreno-Galbis ()
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Eva Moreno-Galbis: GRANEM
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Eva Moreno Galbis

No 1501, Working Papers from Banco de España

Abstract: While Spain has traditionally underperformed its European peers in terms of labor productivity, the trend reverses after 2007. The evolution of aggregate productivity in Spain during the Great Recession is shaped largely, albeit not exclusively, by the adverse conditions in the labor market. Using a longitudinal sample of Spanish manufacturing and services companies between 1995 and 2012, we show that the recent increase in Spanish aggregate productivity is also responsive to the behavior of total factor productivity (TFP) and to composition effects. By combining the information at firm level on balance sheet items, collective agreements and imports-exports, we are able to establish that a collective agreement at the firm level and access to external markets are positively related to TFP performance during the whole period. In addition, our estimates indicate that firm TFP was negatively correlated to the proportion of temporary workers during the expansionary period, 1995-2007, whereas the sign of that correlation reversed during the crisis, 2008-2012. Finally, we relate this sign reversal to the changing composition of temporary workers in the labor market.

Keywords: labor productivity; TFP; temporary workers; collective agreements; exporting firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J24 J52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eff, nep-eur and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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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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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bde:wpaper:1501

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