Labour Market Institutions And Productivity

This book explains the role of formal labour market institutions in keeping the labour utilisation in Central and Eastern Europe above the level characteristic for Western European states. It provides an innovative and enriching take on labour utilisation at large and how various formal labour market institutions can affect the ongoing trend in labour utilisation in a way that is not covered by the extant literature. The impact of labour market institutions on labour market outcomes is analysed throughout 12 chapters, both from a cross-country perspective and in detailed case-studies, by 21 labour market experts from various CEE countries. Most chapters are based on empirical methods yet are presented in an easy-to-follow way in order to make the book also accessible for a non-scientific audience. The volume explores three key questions: How can labour utilisation be increased by labour market institutions? Which CEE countries managed to create a labour market institutional framework beneficial for labour utilisation? How should the labour market institutions in CEE countries be reformed in order to increase labour utilisation? The book argues that the legacy of transition reforms and a centrally planned past is still relevant in explaining common patterns among CEE countries and concludes that increasing the stock of skills accumulated by the employed and improving utilisation of these skills seems to be the first-best solution to increase labour utilisation. The book will be of interest to post-graduate researchers and academics in the fields of labour economics, regional economics, and macroeconomics as well as scholars interested in adopting an institutional analysis approach. Additionally, due to the broader policy implications of the topic, the book will appeal to policymakers and experts interested in labour economics.

According to most orthodox economists, labour market rigidities are the key culprit for such high unemployment as has been observed in Europe during the past three decades. But governments that have attempted to follow the standard prescription of removing rigidities have often faced harsh political opposition. This book looks at why labour market institutions such as employment protection, unemployment benefits, and relative wage rigidities exist, what role they play in society, why they seem so persistent, where the pressure to reform them comes from, and whether reform can be politically viable or not. The book ascribes a central role to the existence of underlying microeconomic frictions and to redistributive pressures between rich and poor, and shows how these ingredients may give rise to labour market rents, which in turn explain why a coherent set of rigidities arise as the outcome of the political process. It is also shown that, at the same time, such rents create resistance to reform, and contribute to locking society into a high-unemployment, rigid equilibrium. Finally, the basic principles exposed in the book are used to discuss various strategies for a successful labour market reform.

This book explores the effects of product market and labour market reforms on firms, labour institutions and labour rights in the economic and industrial relations system in India. India has over the years liberalized its economy through a broad range of reforms concerning the product market and complementing these it has also sought to reform the labour market and the industrial relations system. The book assesses the impact of these reforms on both the formal and informal labour markets in India, critically examines the labour processes and uncovers/describes precarious conditions of labour in various industries and occupations, and analyzes the dynamics involved in the making of industrial, employment and labour policies in contemporary India.

This research paper aims for an empirical validation of the impact of labour institutions on productivity growth. The main objective of this study is to analyse labour and economic growth tendencies of the period between 1980 and 2008 in various OECD countries. In our estimations we followed a specific taxonomy to identify the main features of productivity (output per capita) growth in different labour-skilled branches. Besides determining the sectoral differences of labour demand by standard comparative statistics, we used in our model specification a dynamic panel regression method.All in all, we conclude that the high-skilled branches achieved better economic growth performance than the lower-skilled ones in most of the OECD countries. Analysing the time series panel data of these countries we also claim that productivity growth was negatively correlated with unemployment benefits and employment legislation in the long run.

Using data for 20 OECD countries, examines the response of wages to productivity and the role of labour market institutions to explain differences in this response.

Labour market institutions, including collective bargaining, the regulation of employment contracts and social protection policies, are instrumental for improving the well-being of workers, their families and society. In many countries, these instituti

Scarpetta and Tressel present empirical evidence on the determinants of industry-level multifactor productivity growth. They focus on "traditional factors," including the process of technological catch up, human capital, and research and development (R & D), as well as institutional factors affecting labor adjustment costs. Their analysis is based on harmonized data for 17 manufacturing industries in 18 industrial economies over the past two decades. The disaggregated analysis reveals that the process of technological convergence takes place mainly in low-tech industries, while in high-tech industries, country leaders tend to pull ahead of the others. The link between R & D activity and productivity also depends on technological characteristics of the industries: while there is no evidence of R & D boosting productivity in low-tech industries, the effect is strong in high-tech industries, but the technology leaders tend to enjoy higher returns on R & D expenditure compared with followers. There is also evidence in the data that high labor adjustment costs (proxied by the strictness of employment protection legislation) can have a strong negative impact on productivity. In particular, when institutional settings do not allow wages or internal training to offset high hiring and firing costs, the latter reduce incentives for innovation and adoption of new technologies, and lead to lower productivity performance. Albeit drawn from the experience of industrial countries, this result may have relevant implications for many developing economies characterized by low relative wage flexibility and high labor adjustment costs. This paper--a joint product of the Social Protection Team, Human Development Network, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund--is part of a larger effort to understand what drives productivity growth.

The outcome of three years of research on the role of institutions in labor markets at the research unit Labor Market Policy and Employment of the Social Science Research Center Berlin, these seven contributions were originally presented at a conference in December 1992 before a group of experts i