IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/not/notgep/2020-24.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employment to output elasticities and reforms towards flexicurity: Evidence from OECD Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Holger Gorg
  • Cecilia Hornok
  • Catia Montagna
  • George E. Onwordi

Abstract

Labour market reforms in the direction of 'flexicurity' have been widely endorsed as a means to increasing an economy's ability to adjust to negative shocks while offering adequate social safety nets. This paper empirically examines how such reforms infl uence employment's responsiveness to output fluctuations (employment-output elasticity). To address this question, we employ a panel of OECD countries, which also incorporates the period of the Great Recession, and distinguish between passive and active labour market policy types. We find that the effects of any single policy change are shaped by the broader existing policy-mix within which it takes place.

Suggested Citation

  • Holger Gorg & Cecilia Hornok & Catia Montagna & George E. Onwordi, 2020. "Employment to output elasticities and reforms towards flexicurity: Evidence from OECD Countries," Discussion Papers 2020-24, University of Nottingham, GEP.
  • Handle: RePEc:not:notgep:2020-24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/gep/documents/papers/2020/2020-24.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Torben M. Andersen, 2015. "A flexicurity labor market during recession," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 173-173, July.
    2. Faccini, Renato & Rosazza Bondibene, Chiara, 2012. "Labour market institutions and unemployment volatility: evidence from OECD countries," Bank of England working papers 461, Bank of England.
    3. David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2010. "Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(548), pages 452-477, November.
    4. Robert C. Feenstra & Robert Inklaar & Marcel P. Timmer, 2015. "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3150-3182, October.
    5. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    6. Cacciatore, Matteo & Fiori, Giuseppe & Ghironi, Fabio, 2016. "Market deregulation and optimal monetary policy in a monetary union," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 120-137.
    7. repec:iza:izawol:journl:y:2015:p:173 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Blanchard, Olivier & Wolfers, Justin, 2000. "The Role of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: The Aggregate Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(462), pages 1-33, March.
    9. Eichhorst, Werner & Konle-Seidl, Regina, 2005. "The Interaction of Labor Market Regulation and Labor Market Policies in Welfare State Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 1718, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Torben M. Andersen & Michael Svarer, 2007. "Flexicurity: Labour Market Performance in Denmark," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 53(3), pages 389-429, September.
    11. Abbritti, Mirko & Fahr, Stephan, 2013. "Downward wage rigidity and business cycle asymmetries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 871-886.
    12. Mirko Abbritti & Sebastian Weber, 2018. "Reassessing the Role of Labor Market Institutions for the Business Cycle," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 14(1), pages 1-34, January.
    13. Behar Alberto & Hodge James, 2008. "The Employment Effects of Mergers in a Declining Industry: The Case of South African Gold Mining," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-20, August.
    14. Neil R. Ericsson & James G. MacKinnon, 2002. "Distributions of error correction tests for cointegration," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 5(2), pages 285-318, June.
    15. repec:oup:ecpoli:v:21:y:2006:i:45:p:5-59 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Olivier Blanchard & Florence Jaumotte & Prakash Loungani, 2014. "Labor market policies and IMF advice in advanced economies during the Great Recession," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-23, December.
    17. Andrea Bassanini, 2012. "Aggregate Earnings and Macroeconomic Shocks: the Role of Labour Market Policies and Institutions," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 3(3).
    18. Christopher Bowdler & Luca Nunziata, 2007. "Inflation Adjustment and Labour Market Structures: Evidence from a Multi‐country Study," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(3), pages 619-642, September.
    19. Gabriele Ciminelli & Romain Duval & Davide Furceri, 2022. "Employment Protection Deregulation and Labor Shares in Advanced Economies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1174-1190, November.
    20. Alberto Behar, 2017. "Comparing the employment-output elasticities of migrants and nationals: the case of the Gulf Cooperation Council," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(10), pages 703-707, June.
    21. Olivier Blanchard, 2006. "European unemployment: the evolution of facts and ideas [‘The macroeconomics of low inflation’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 21(45), pages 6-59.
    22. Cacciatore, Matteo, 2014. "International trade and macroeconomic dynamics with labor market frictions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 17-30.
    23. Thomas Davoine & Christian Keuschnigg, 2015. "Flexicurity, Taxes and Job Reallocation," CESifo Working Paper Series 5302, CESifo.
    24. Samuel Bentolila & Pierre Cahuc & Juan José Dolado & Thomas Le Barbanchon, ., 2010. "Unemployment and Temporary Jobs in the Crisis: Comparing France and Spain," Working Papers 2010-07, FEDEA.
    25. Romain Duval & Davide Furceri & Joao Jalles, 2020. "Job protection deregulation in good and bad times," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 370-390.
    26. Abbritti, Mirko & Weber, Sebastian, 2010. "Labor market institutions and the business cycle - unemployment rigidities vs. real wage rigidities," Working Paper Series 1183, European Central Bank.
    27. Davide Furceri & Ernesto Crivelli & Mr. Joël Toujas-Bernate, 2012. "Can Policies Affect Employment Intensity of Growth? A Cross-Country Analysis," IMF Working Papers 2012/218, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Görg, Holger & Hornok, Cecília & Montagna, Catia & Onwordi, George E., 2018. "Employment to Output Elasticities & Reforms towards Flexicurity: Evidence from OECD Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 12004, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Hassan Molana & Catia Montagna & George E. Onwordi, 2021. "De-Globalization, Welfare State Reforms and Labor Market Outcomes," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 69(4), pages 624-655, December.
    3. Gnocchi, Stefano & Lagerborg, Andresa & Pappa, Evi, 2015. "Do labor market institutions matter for business cycles?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 299-317.
    4. Oliver Falck & Siegfried Schönherr, 2016. "An Economic Reform Agenda for Croatia: a comprehensive economic reform package prepared for the Croatian Statehood Foundation," ifo Forschungsberichte, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 70, October.
    5. Arestis, Philip & Ferreiro, Jesus & Gomez, Carmen, 2023. "Does employment protection legislation affect employment and unemployment?11We acknowledge the comments of an editor and an associate editor of the journal and three reviewers. Their suggestions and r," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    6. Christoph S. Weber, 2020. "The unemployment effect of central bank transparency," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(6), pages 2947-2975, December.
    7. Lastauskas, Povilas & Stakėnas, Julius, 2020. "Labor market reforms and the monetary policy environment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    8. Bertola, Giuseppe, 2017. "European unemployment revisited: Shocks, institutions, integration," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 588-612.
    9. Eichhorst, Werner & Feil, Michael & Braun, Christoph, 2008. "What Have We Learned? Assessing Labor Market Institutions and Indicators," IZA Discussion Papers 3470, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Oscar Bajo-Rubio & Burcu Berke, 2023. "Revisiting the effects of government size and labour market institutions on macroeconomic volatility: the case of the eurozone," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 91-96.
    11. John T. Addison, 2016. "Collective bargaining systems and macroeconomic and microeconomic flexibility: the quest for appropriate institutional forms in advanced economies," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-53, December.
    12. Josué Diwambuena & Raquel Fonseca & Stefan Schubert, 2023. "Labor Market Institutions, Productivity, and the Business Cycle: An Application to Italy," Cahiers de recherche / Working Papers 2302, Chaire de recherche sur les enjeux économiques intergénérationnels / Research Chair in Intergenerational Economics.
    13. Arno Hantzsche & Simon Savsek & Sebastian Weber, 2018. "Labour Market Adjustments to Financing Conditions under Sectoral Rigidities in the Euro Area," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 769-794, September.
    14. Alessio Brown & Johannes Koettl, 2015. "Active labor market programs - employment gain or fiscal drain?," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-36, December.
    15. Kapás, Judit & Czeglédi, Pál, 2008. "Technológiai és intézményi változások a munkapiacon és a vállalati szervezetben. Nyugat- és kelet-közép-európai összehasonlítás [Technological and institutional changes on the labour market and in ," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(4), pages 308-332.
    16. Matteo Cacciatore & Giuseppe Fiori, 2016. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Goods and Labor Marlet Deregulation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 1-24, April.
    17. Leonida Correia & Daniela Carvalho, 2016. "Cyclical Dynamics of Unemployment: Portugal versus the Euro Area," Athens Journal of Business & Economics, Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), vol. 2(2), pages 149-166, April.
    18. Faccini, Renato & Rosazza Bondibene, Chiara, 2012. "Labour market institutions and unemployment volatility: evidence from OECD countries," Bank of England working papers 461, Bank of England.
    19. Mirko Abbritti & Mr. Sebastian Weber, 2019. "Market Regulation, Cycles and Growth in a Monetary Union," IMF Working Papers 2019/123, International Monetary Fund.
    20. Ángel L. Martín‐Román & Jaime Cuéllar‐Martín & Alfonso Moral, 2023. "Natural and cyclical unemployment: A stochastic frontier decomposition and economic policy implications," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 5-39, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    employment-output elasticity; labour market policy; welfare state; flexicurity;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:not:notgep:2020-24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Hilary Hughes (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgnotuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.