Labor and product market reforms: questioning policy complementarity

This article proposes a dynamic efficiency wages model with imperfect competition on labor and product markets. In this framework, job insecurity generates a perverse effect on workers incentives, which shifts up the real wages schedule and may yield employment losses. Product market regulation and redundancy payments contribute to reducing labor turnover, thus easing the workers incentive constraint. Consequently, and against conventional wisdom, regulations may have a positive impact on employment, and a substitution effect may emerge across deregulation policies. Moreover, in some cases, a complementarity arises between regulations in product and labor markets, both interacting to ensure more stable labor relations. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.