The Effects of Employment Protection and Product Market Regulations on the Italian Labor Market

Adriana Kugler and Giovanni Pica

No 28, LABORatorio R. Revelli Working Papers Series from LABORatorio R. Revelli, Centre for Employment Studies

Abstract: Labor market regulations have often being blamed for high and persistent unemployment in Europe, but evidence on their impact remains mixed. More recently, attention has turned to the impact of product market regulations on employment growth. This paper analyzes how labor and product market regulations interact to affect turnover and unemployment. We present a matching model which illustrates how barriers to entry in the product market mitigate the impact of labor market deregulation. We, then, use the Italian Social Security employer-employee panel to study the interaction between barriers to entry and dismissal costs. We exploit the fact that costs for unjust dismissals in Italy increased for firms below 15 employees relative to bigger firms afeter 1990. We find that the increase in dismissal costs afeter 1990 decreased accessions and separations in small relative to big firms, especially for women. Moreover, consistent with our model, we find evidence that the reduction in dismissal costs had smaller effects on turnover for women in sectors faced with strict product market regulations.

Keywords: Barriers to Entry; Cost of Unjust Dismissals; European Unemployment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J63 J65 L11 L43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2003
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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Related works:
Chapter: The Effects of Employment Protection and Product Market Regulations on the Italian Labour Market (2006)
Working Paper: Effects of Employment Protection and Product Market Regulations on the Italian Labour Market (2004)
Working Paper: Effects of Employment Protection and Product Market Regulations on the Italian Labor Market (2003)
Working Paper: Effects of employment protection and product market regulations on the Italian labor market (2003)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cca:wplabo:28

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