Effects Of Labor Market Reforms Research Articles

Internal migrants, skill complementarity and wage premium for local workers: a micro econometric analysis of Chinese households

China’s rapid urbanization has been driven by large-scale internal migrants, and it is worth exploring the impact of internal migrants on local labor markets. Based on data from China’s population census, population sample survey and urban household survey, this study empirically tests the wage premium effect of internal migrants on local labor, and further investigates the mechanisms of wage premium from skill complementarity, as well as the policy adjustment effect of labor market reforms. The results show that: (1) The wage premium effect originating from migrants is significant, and gradually decreases over time and with the increase of local worker wages. (2) The wage premium effect is more prominent in large cities, mega and super-sized cities, which can be explained by economic agglomeration and division of labor induced by skill complementarities. (3) Labor market-oriented reforms contribute to enhancing the wage premium effect, with marginal effects of 3.71% and 3.64%.

The distributional impact of labour market reforms: A model-based assessment

Abstract This paper studies the effects of labour market reforms on the functional distribution of income in a DSGE model (Roeger et al., 2008) with skill differentiation, in which households supply three types of labour: low-, medium- and high-skilled. The households receive income from labour, tangible capital, intangible capital, financial wealth, and transfers. We trace how structural reforms in the labour market affect these different types of income. The quantification of labour market reforms is based on changes in structural indicators that significantly reduce the gap of the EU average income towards the best-performing EU countries. We find a general trade-off between an increase in employment for a particular group and the income of the average group member relative to income per capita. Reforms, which aim at increasing employment of low- and medium-skilled workers, are associated with a fall in low- and medium-skilled wages relative to income per capita. Capital owners generally benefit from labour market reforms, with an increasing share of profits in total income that can be attributed to limited entry into the final goods production sector.

Estimating the Employment Band of Inaction with Multiple Breaks due to Labor Market Reforms

This paper proposes a new way of testing the effect of labor market reforms in the employment adjustment at the macro level. Following the approach to hysteresis based on the presence of non-convex costs of adjustment, a switching aggregate employment equation is estimated, with an unknown splitting factor, from a computational implementation of the linear play hysteresis operator. The play hysteresis operator describes a dynamics where non-convex adjustment costs create intervals of weak reaction of employment to small variations in forcing variables, while spurts in employment adjustment may occur as a consequence of a large, or cumulative small shocks. The main contribution of this paper is to extend an existing approach for the case where there are disruptive breaks, by accommodating changes in the value of the switching parameter of the employment equation whenever labor market reforms are present. Numerical experiments on the Portuguese economy are performed.

The Distributional Impact of Labour Market Reforms: A Model-Based Assessment

This paper studies the effects of labour market reforms on the functional distribution of income in a DSGE model (Roeger et al., 2008) with skill differentiation, in which households supply three types of labour: low-, medium- and high-skilled. The households receive income from labour, tangible capital, intangible capital, financial wealth and transfers. We trace how structural reforms in the labour market affect these different types of income. The quantification of labour market reforms is based on changes in structural indicators that significantly reduce the gap of the EU average income towards the best-performing EU countries. We find a general trade-off between an increase in employment for a particular group and the income of the average group member relative to income per capita. Reforms that increase employment of low- and medium-skilled workers imply a trade-off between employment and wages in the low- and medium-skilled group, due to the increase in the skill-specific supply of labour. Capital owners generally benefit from labour market reforms, with an increasing share in total income. This can be attributed to limited entry into the final goods production sector, underlining the importance of product market reforms in addition to labour market reforms.

Unemployment, growth and welfare effects of labor market reforms

The effects of labor market reforms are studied in an innovation-driven model of endogenous growth with a heterogeneous labor force, labor market rigidities, and structural unemployment. The model is calibrated for a stylized middle-income economy in Latin America and used to perform a range of experiments, including both individual labor market reforms (cuts in the minimum wage and unemployment benefit rates) and composite reform programs involving additional measures. The results show that individual reforms may generate conflicting effects on growth and welfare in the long run, even in the presence of positive policy externalities. A reduction in training costs may also create an oversupply of qualified labor and higher unemployment in the long run. Public investment in infrastructure, partly through its effects on innovation, can help to mitigate this oversupply problem.

Identifying asymmetric effects of labor market reforms

This paper proposes a novel approach to identify structural long-term driving forces of the labor market and their short-run state-dependent effects. Based on search and matching theory, our empirical model extracts these driving forces within an unobserved components approach. We relate changes in the labor market structures to reforms that enhance the flexibility of the labor market in expansion and recession. Results for Germany and Spain show that labor market reforms have substantially weaker beneficial effects in the short run when implemented in recessions. From a policy perspective, these results highlight the costs of introducing reforms in recessions.

The Political Economy of European Populism: Labour Market Dualisation and Protest Voting in Germany and Spain

Many advanced economies around the world have recently witnessed a notable rise in populism stirring severe political unrest and social instability. This paper addresses the apparent academic confusion regarding the origins of this phenomenon and combines politico-economic analysis with electoral data to derive a new theory of populist demand. I conceptualise populism as a problem of political alienation stemming from the incapacity of social democratic parties to comprehensively represent the working class in the context of increased labour market dualisation. If the group of underrepresented workers is not sufficiently numerous to be electorally-relevant, right-wing populist protest parties can make use of the representational vacuum by reframing class-distributional issues along cultural conflict lines. If, however, the group of marginalised workers is large enough to mobilise political attention, left-wing populist parties will address socio-economic issues more directly. I thus assume an inverted hyperbolic causal relationship between labour market segmentation and the demand for populism. This hypothesis is tested in a critical case study on the electoral effects of labour market reforms in Germany and Spain.

The effects of labour market reforms upon unemployment and income inequalities: an agent-based model

This paper is meant to analyse the effects of labour market structural reforms by means of an agent-based model. Building on Dosi et al., (2016b) we introduce a policy regime change characterized by a set of structural reforms on the labour market, keeping constant the structure of the capital- and consumption-good markets. Confirming a recent IMF report (Jaumotte and Buitron, 2015), the model shows how labour market structural reforms reducing workersu bargaining power and compressing wages tend to increase (i) unemployment, (ii) functional income inequality, and (iii) personal income inequality. We further undertake a global sensitivity analysis on key variables and parameters which confirms the robustness of our findings.

Evaluating the effects of labour market reforms on job flows: The Italian case

In this paper, we assess the effects of the labour market reforms to enhance flexibility, implemented at the beginning of the new millennium in Italy. We contribute to the debate on whether temporary contracts have positive or negative effects on employment and workers' perspectives of transition to a permanent job. We use an unexploited panel dataset of work histories for 2003–2010 and propose an estimation method based on Markov chains to measure the effects of the reforms on individual employment. Contrary to the goals of the reforms, our estimates show a small positive effect on job creation and a substitution of permanent contracts with temporary contracts, a risk amplified for young people and workers in the depressed areas of Southern Italy.

Drivers and effects of labour market reforms: Evidence from a novel policy compendium

Abstract The paper analyses the determinants and short-term effects of labour market reforms, using information from a novel policy compendium that covers 110 developed and developing economies between 2008 and 2014. We find that the approval of reforms is positively associated with the unemployment rate, the simultaneous implementation of fiscal consolidation measures and the presence of a fixed exchange rate regime. Differences in the results are explored by looking at the direction of reforms (i.e. increasing or decreasing legislation), temporal horizon (i.e. temporary or permanent measures) and coverage (i.e. complete or two-tier reforms); while also analysing separately reforms’ determinants across domains of labour legislation (e.g. permanent contracts, collective dismissals). Finally, we find that deregulatory labour market reforms tend to increase the unemployment rate in the short run when they are approved during contractionary periods—while they have a non-significant effect when approved during periods of economic stability or expansion. JEL Classification: J20, J52, J38, J48, J58, K31

The Effects of Labour Market Reforms upon Unemployment and Income Inequalities: An Agent Based Model

This paper is meant to analyse the effects of labour market structural reforms by means of an agent-based model. Building on Dosi et al. (2016b) we introduce a policy regime change characterized by a set of structural reforms on the labour market, keeping constant the structure of the capital- and consumption-good markets. Confirming a recent IMF report (Jaumotte and Buitron, 2015), the model shows how labour market structural reforms reducing workers’ bargaining power and compressing wages tend to increase (i) unemployment, (ii) functional income inequality, and (iii) personal income inequality. We further undertake a global sensitivity analysis on key variables and parameters which confirms the robustness of our findings.

Evaluating the Economic Effects of Labour Market Reforms in Spain after Franco Regime : Using Okun's Law

Evaluating the Economic Effects of Labour Market Reforms in Spain after Franco Regime : Using Okun's Law

Spillover Effects of Labour Market Reforms in a Three-Country World

I extend the model-based literature on spillover effects of labour market reforms on foreign (un-)employment by allowing for third-country effects. When the workhorse two-country model is enlarged to include a third country, a reform causes an additional indirect effect through a terms-of-trade shift between the foreign countries. To quantify the increase or reduction in the overall spillover by means of this channel, simulations based on empirically realistic scenarios are carried out. Thereby, the indirect effect turns out to be too small to overturn the direct effect or to increase it considerably. Differences in the reform spillover effects between foreign countries are mainly due to differences in characteristics which in uence the size of the direct impact.

Women Labor Market Participation in Europe: Novel Evidence on Trends and Shaping Factors

We investigate the changes in women's participation patterns across 15 EU countries over the last 20 years using individual data from ECHP and EUSILC databases. Our findings reveal a role of social policies and institutional factors that is stronger than what has so far been assessed. Labor market reforms explain almost 25% of the actual increase in labor force participation for young women, and more than 30% for highly educated women. The effects of labor market reforms on the participation of low skilled women in the labor force are instead surprisingly small. We also find that reforms of the institutional framework towards a model of flexicure labor market are effective in enhancing women labor supply only when deregulation is accompanied by sufficient social compensation.

International Spillover of Labor Market Reforms

This paper uses a dynamic economy model, with unionized labor markets, to analyze the effects of labor market reforms, similar to those recently introduced in Germany, on the domestic and trading partner economies. The model is calibrated on Germany and the rest of the Euro area. The results indicate that German labor market reforms have positive spillover effects on the rest of the Euro area, which operate through the channel of trade, relative price adjustment, and financial market integration. Compared to a competitive labor market, setting, unionization dampens the positive response of the domestic economy and magnifies the spillover effects.

On the short-run effects of labor market reforms

While several countries have recognized the need of introducing flexibility to their labor markets, there are different ways of doing so. Using a small open economy with tenure-dependent separation taxes, this paper compares introducing a full reform with two partial alternatives: (1) the introduction of temporary contracts, and (2) the elimination of separation costs from all new hires while freezing them on the workers that were hired prior to the reform. The first alternative can achieve a first-best long run outcome but leads to a sharp initial recession. The second alternative generates a similar long run outcome but avoids the recessionary adjustment.

Product Market Regulation and the Benefits of Wage Moderation

Euro-area real wages have decelerated sharply in the last 20 years, but this has not yet translated into visibly lower unemployment or faster growth. Weak output growth after such a cost shock is somewhat puzzling and has led some to question the benefits of moderation. By isolating structural from cyclical factors in a panel of industrial countries, I show that structurally slower real growth, that is, wage moderation, does raise output growth and lower unemployment rates. However, I show that the impact on both variables depends crucially on product market regulation: weaker competition and barriers to entry mute the growth effects of structural real changes by allowing incumbent firms to appropriate larger rents. In this context, overly regulated product markets in the euro area are undermining the effects of labor market reforms on output and employment.

Product Market Regulation and the Benefits of Wage Moderation

Euro-area real wages have decelerated sharply in the last 20 years, but this has not yet translated into visibly lower unemployment or faster growth. Weak output growth after such a cost shock is somewhat puzzling and has led some to question the benefits of moderation. By isolating structural from cyclical factors in a panel of industrial countries, I show that structurally slower real growth, that is, wage moderation, does raise output growth and lower unemployment rates. However, I show that the impact on both variables depends crucially on product market regulation: weaker competition and barriers to entry mute the growth effects of structural real changes by allowing incumbent firms to appropriate larger rents. In this context, overly regulated product markets in the euro area are undermining the effects of labor market reforms on output and employment.

Product Market Regulation and the Benefits of Wage Moderation

Euro-area real wages have decelerated sharply in the last 20 years, but this has not yet translated into visibly lower unemployment or faster growth. Weak output growth after such a cost shock is somewhat puzzling and has led some to question the benefits of moderation. By isolating structural from cyclical factors in a panel of industrial countries, I show that structurally slower real growth, that is, wage moderation, does raise output growth and lower unemployment rates. However, I show that the impact on both variables depends crucially on product market regulation: weaker competition and barriers to entry mute the growth effects of structural real changes by allowing incumbent firms to appropriate larger rents. In this context, overly regulated product markets in the euro area are undermining the effects of labor market reforms on output and employment.

The Labor Market and Economic Adjustment

This paper examines the role of the labor market in the transmission process of adjustment policies in developing countries. It begins by reviewing the recent evidence regarding the functioning of these markets. It then studies the implications of wage inertia, nominal contracts, labor market segmentation, and impediments to labor mobility for stabilization policies. The effect of labor market reforms on economic flexibility and the channels through which labor market imperfections alter the effects of structural adjustment measures are discussed next. The last part of the paper identifies a variety of issues that may require further investigation, such as the link between changes in relative wages and the distributional effects of adjustment policies.