Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation? Evidence from the French Retail Industry

Marianne Bertrand and Francis Kramarz ()

No 8211, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Does entry regulation hinder job creation? We investigate this question in the context of the French retail industry, a sector that has experienced especially low rates of job creation over the last 25 years. Since the early 70s, the French government has required regional zoning board approval for the creation or extension of any large retail store. Using a unique database that provides time and regional variation in boards' approval decisions, we show that this requirement created barriers to entry in the retail sector. We also show that these barriers to entry, either measured directly by approval rates or predicted by the political composition of the boards, weakened employment growth in the retail industry. Our findings indicate that retail employment could have been more than 10% higher today had entry regulation not been introduced. Promoting product market competition may thus be a key reform for countries with poor employment performance.

JEL-codes: J0 L5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Published as Bertrand, Marianne and Francis Kramarz. "Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation? Evidence From The French Retail Industry," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002, v107(4,Nov), 1369-1413.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8211.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation? Evidence from the French Retail Industry (2002)
Working Paper: Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation? Evidence from the French Retail Industry (2002)
Working Paper: Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation? Evidence from the French Retail Industry (2001)
Working Paper: Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation ? Evidence from the French Retail Industry (2001)
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:nbr:nberwo:8211

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8211

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().