Job Protection Legislation and Productivity Growth in OECD Countries

Andrea Bassanini, Luca Nunziata and Danielle Venn

No 3555, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of employment protection legislation on productivity in the OECD, using annual cross-country aggregate data on the degree of regulations and industry-level data on productivity from 1982 to 2003. We adopt a "difference-in-differences" framework, which exploits likely differences in the productivity effect of dismissal regulations in different industries. Our identifying assumption is that stricter employment protection influences worker or firm behaviour, and thereby productivity, more in industries where the policy is likely to be binding than in other industries. The advantage of this approach is that, in contrast with standard cross-country analysis, we can control for unobserved factors that, on average, are likely to have the same effect on productivity in all industries. Our empirical results suggest that mandatory dismissal regulations have a depressing impact on productivity growth in industries where layoff restrictions are more likely to be binding. We present a large battery of robustness checks, including dealing with endogeneity issues, that suggest that our finding is robust.

Keywords: productivity; labour market institutions; difference-in-differences; EPL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 68 pages
Date: 2008-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eff, nep-lab and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

Published - revised version published in: Economic Policy, 2009, 24 (58), 349-402

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Journal Article: Job protection legislation and productivity growth in OECD countries (2009)
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