Employment protection and collective bargaining during the great recession: a comprehensive review of international evidence

In this article, we present information from a unique database of labour market reforms implemented in 111 developed and developing countries between 2008 and 2014. We show that the number of reforms implemented each year has gradually increased up to 2012 and that the majority of reforms were passed in advanced economies – with some EU member states particularly hit by the crisis being the most active reformers (e.g. Spain, Greece, Italy). Moreover, the results show that permanent contracts and collective bargaining were the most popular areas of labour market policy interventions and that the majority of reforms decreased the strictness of employment protection legislation – although large disparities emerge across world regions in this respect. Finally, the article compares our database to different indicators of employment regulation in order to check the consistency of our results.