 Protecting Against Labour Market Risk: Employment Protection or Unemployment Benefits?Tito Boeri, J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz and Vincenzo Galasso No 2003-17, Working Papers from FEDEA Abstract: We document the presence of a trade-off between unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the provision of insurance against labour market risk. The mix of quantity and price protective measures adopted by the various countries would seem to correspond to a stable politico-economic equilibrium. We develop a model in which voters are required to cast a ballot over the strictness of EPL and over the generosity of UB. Agents are heterogeneous along two dimensions: employment status -- there are insiders and outsiders -- and skills -- low and high ability. We show that if there exists a majority of low-ability insiders, the voting game has a politico- economic equilibrium with low UB and high EPL; otherwise, the equilibrium features high UB and low EPL. Another testable implication of the model is that a larger share of elderly workers increases the demand for EPL. Panel data on institutions and on the age and educational structures of the populations are broadly in line with our results. We also find that those favouring EPL over UB in a public opinion poll carried in 2001 in Italy have precisely the same characteristics predicted by our model. References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2003-17 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from FEDEA |
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