Profit Sharing,Credit Market Imperfections and Equilibrium Unemployment*

We investigate the interaction between labour and credit market imperfections for equilibrium unemployment in the presence of profit sharing. In a partial equilibrium with exogenous outside options, increased bargaining power of banks has adverse employment effects. In a general equilibrium with endogenous outside options, this relationship is frequently reversed; reduced credit market imperfections increase equilibrium unemployment if the labour market imperfections—measured by the bargaining power of trade unions—are sufficiently strong and the benefit–replacement ratio is sufficiently high. Finally, we show that higher bankruptcy risks increase equilibrium unemployment under similar conditions.     

Flexibility and Growth

After two decades of theoretical discussion and application of labour policies aimed at flexibility, ever-spreading unemployment in Europe has compelled some official institutions to admit that the 'rigidity' of the labour market does not suffice to account for the different trends in employment displayed by Europe and the United States. In this paper, we focus on the role played by differentials in income growth. After briefly reviewing the explanations of European unemployment based on labour market rigidity and their respective weaknesses, we look at the relationship between growth and employment, concluding that there are grounds for maintaining that the causes of Europe's higher unemployment reside mainly in its lower rate of growth.We therefore investigate the reasons that may be responsible for a more stringent macroeconomic constraint on European growth.We conclude that if a lack of growth is at the root of European unemployment, then merely dismantling labour market institutions, and replacing them with a more flexible system of industrial relations, will not only fail to produce the expected results but may also have negative effects, in both the social and productive structure.     

Pro-market institutions and labor market outcomes: A panel-data analysis of U.S. metropolitan areas

We expand previous U.S. state-level research on the relationship between pro-market institutions and labor market outcomes by examining this relationship at the U.S. metropolitan-area level. Using panel data for 1992–2012 in a fixed-effects model, we investigate the effect of pro-market institutions on the unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, employment-population ratio, and employment growth across 366 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results indicate that pro-market institutions are associated with a lower unemployment rate, higher employment-population ratio, and faster employment growth. These results suggest that local-area policies are important for achieving favorable labor market conditions at the local level.     

Experience Rating versus Employment Protection Laws in a Model where Firms Monitor Workers*

While layoff costs in the U.S. are mostly due to experience‐rated unemployment insurance, layoff costs in European labour markets are primarily a consequence of employment protection laws. In this paper we compare the effects of experience rating and employment protection laws on employment and welfare in a model where unemployment arises due to efficiency wage setting and where labour turnover is inefficiently high. We show that a revenue‐neutral introduction of experience rating reduces labour turnover and increases employment and welfare. The introduction of employment protection laws may also reduce labour turnover but employment declines.     

Unemployment and Workers' Control

The relationship between democratic workers' control and unemployment is explored. When unemployment arises from labor market distortions, market imperfections, or from information imperfections, labor-managed firms are superior to capitalist firms. The firm's governance and decision making structures then play an instrumental role in the level of unemployment. However, when involuntary unemployment arises from effective demand failures, then workers' control may not be able to maintain or to restore full employment. In such cases, collective and coordinated efforts are needed to reduce the level of involuntary unemployment.     

Price and quantity adjustments in the Austrian labour market

Austria is among the very few countries in the European Union which have managed to maintain comparatively low unemployment rates and high employment rates. This study looks at the price and quantity adjustment mechanisms in the Austrian labour market which may have contributed to this favourable outcome. After reviewing briefly the basic theoretical reasoning an empirical investigation is began into gross flow dynamics in the labour market and the cyclical volatility of employment and unemployment in Austria. In international comparison Austrian unemployment is very stable over the business cycle. This is due mainly to the high sensitivity of the labour force on cyclical conditions and, partly, also on the relatively weak responsiveness of employment to cyclical fluctuations in output, the latter being possibly attributable to the high degree of real wage flexibility in Austria. The study proceeds to show that the long-run elasticity of wages with respect to unemployment is indeed quite high in Austria. However, evidence was also found for outsider effects in the Austrian wage setting process. Relative wage structures, on the other hand, appear to be rather rigid.     

Chinese export competition,declining exports and adjustments at the industry and regional level in Europe

We analyze how a set of 22 European countries was affected by increased Chinese export competition between 1995 and 2008. Employing product‐group level data, we observe a reduction in the export volumes of European countries due to increased Chinese export competition. This deceleration in the export sector induces changes within the manufacturing industries, especially a decline in employment. When using more aggregated, regional‐level data, our analysis shows that the industry sector as a whole declines, resulting in an increased unemployment rate. The importance of Chinese export competition for Europe is attributable to its high export intensity.     

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN SERVICE INDUSTRIES: ARE THE TRANSATLANTIC DIFFERENCES MEASUREMENT‐DRIVEN?

Since the mid-nineties, U.S. labor productivity outgrows its European counterpart by a wide margin. van Ark et al. (2003 ) have found three service industries where productivity growth has accelerated in the U.S., but not in Europe, to account for most of the difference. These three industries are wholesale and retail trade, and trade in financial securities. However, since measurement methods differ on both sides of the Atlantic, Europe's shortfall in productivity growth could be a statistical artifact. This paper tries to answer the question whether this is indeed the case by quantifying the extent to which the U.S. growth rates in trade and banking are pulled upward by measurement methods that are unusual in Europe. In addition, some observations are offered on whether the recent upswing in productivity growth in the U.S. services sector has cured "Baumol's Cost Disease."     

美国金融生态的恶化与量化宽松货币政策就业效应的失灵

在量化宽松货币政策下,美国的经济衰退得到了显著遏制,但失业率却持续在高水平运行,表明量化宽松货币政策对降低失业水平无效。研究显示,金融危机造成了美国金融生态的明显恶化,银行体系采取了紧缩信贷的应对措施,因此,美国政府通过量化宽松货币政策释放的流动性被截留在银行体系内部,不能形成满足市场投资需求的流动性供给,国内投资不能扩张,失业率就不可能下降,其结果必然导致量化宽松货币政策就业效应的失灵。     

Technology–Policy Interaction in Frictional Labour-Markets

Does capital-embodied technological change play an important role in shaping labour-market outcomes? To address this question, we develop a model with vintage capital and search-matching frictions where irreversible investment in new vintages of capital creates heterogeneity in productivity among firms, matched as well as vacant. We demonstrate that capital-embodied technological change reduces labour demand and raises equilibrium unemployment and unemployment durations. In addition, the presence of labour-market regulations (unemployment benefits, payroll taxes, and firing costs) exacerbates these effects. Thus, the model is qualitatively consistent with some key features of the European labour-market experience relative to that of the U.S.: it features a sharper rise in unemployment and a sharper fall in the vacancy rate and the labour share. A calibrated version of our model suggests that this technology–policy interaction could explain a sizeable fraction of the observed differences between the U.S. and Europe.     

Entry,market turbulence and industry employment growth

This paper investigates the relationship between industrial dynamics in terms of firm entry, market turbulence and employment growth. Do entry of firms, the composition of industry dynamics (net entry) and market turbulence (entry and exit) influence industrial employment growth? This paper provides an empirical investigation, using unique data for 42 disaggregated Swedish industrial sectors during the period 1997–2001. It is hypothesised that the importance of entering firms, net entry and market turbulence may differ significantly across industries. A quantile regression method is used in order to detect industrial differences in the response to industrial employment growth. The empirical evidence shows that, on the one hand, firm entry and market turbulence have a positive effect on employment for fast growing industries and that the effect is larger for high growth industries. On the other hand, the composition of industry dynamics in terms of net entry rates has a more dispersed effect across all industries, even though the effect of net entry is larger for high growth industries.     

ICT and Productivity in Europe and the United States Where Do the Differences Come From?

In this paper we analyse labour productivity growth in 51 industriesin European countries and the United States. Using shift-sharetechniques we identify the industries in which the U.S. is leadingmost strongly. With a detailed decomposition analysis we identifywhether the sources of the U.S. advantage are due to fasterproductivity growth, higher industry productivity levels relativeto the country aggregate, different employment shares or fasterchange in employment shares of rapidly growing industries. Theresults show that U.S. productivity has grown faster than inthe EU because of a larger employment share in the ICT producingsector and faster productivity growth in services industriesthat make intensive use of ICT. Wholesale and retail trade andthe financial securities industry account for most of the differencein aggregate productivity growth between the EU and the U.S.(JEL N10, O47, O57)     

Restrictive Macroeconomic Policies and Unemployment in the European Union

This paper looks at the impact the European integration process has had on the unemployment level of European Union member countries. While the persistence of relatively high unemployment in Europe is often attributed to supply-side factors, such as the rigidities of the labour market, this study contends that the major cause for the rise of unemployment in the EU has been the very macroeconomic policies of the EU itself. The paper argues that the continuous pursuit of deflationary policies and the macroeconomic constraint imposed first by the membership of the European Monetary System and, secondly, by the convergence criteria of the Maastricht Treaty, have been the real impediments to reducing unemployment.     

Insider-outsider influences on industry wages

The persistence of high rates of unemployment in Europe has focused renewed attention on the wage determination process. One aspect which has received particular attention recently is the extent to which wages are determined by insiders, with outsiders having little impact on the wage bargain. If outsiders are disenfranchised in the wage determination process, they may be unable to underbid themselves into employment. The insider-outsider model, and the associated implication of hysteresis, thus provides a possible explanation for persistent involuntary un-employment. Most empirical work on the importance of the insider-outsider model and hysteresis has been done at the aggregate level, either by testing whether wage growth is related to the level or the change in unemployment, or by testing if employment or unemployment follows a random walk. This paper extends both of these lines of analysis to the industry level. Based on a specification which nests alternative models of the wage determination process, estimation results are presented for fifteen industries using annual data for fourteen industrialized countries, and for pooled time-series cross-country data. The paper also tests the hypothesis that only industry-specific variables are important to the determination of industry wages and considers whether differences in industry wage determination might help to understand cross-country differences in unemployment. The results offer considerable support to the insider view of wage determination. Industries in which wages seem to be determined by a natural rate/Phillips curve model — the primary competing model considered in the paper — appear to be the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, at the industry level hysteresis does not appear to characterise wage formation in the high-unemployment European countries to a greater extent than in North America and Japan.     

The Relationship between Output and Unemployment with Efficiency Wages

Abstract. We construct a stylised model of the supply side with goods and labour market imperfections to show that an economy can rationally operate at a low-effort state in which the relationship between output and unemployment is positive. We examine data from the G7 countries over 1960–2001 and find that only German data strongly favour a persistent negative relationship between the level of output and rate of unemployment. The consequence of this is that circumstances exist in which market imperfections could pose serious obstacles to the smooth working of expansionary and/or stabilisation policies and a positive demand shock might have adverse effects on employment.     

Credit constraints and growth gains from governance

This paper contributes to the governance literature by analyzing the specific mechanisms through which governance affects economic growth: The credit channel. Specifically, it investigates the growth impact of governance on industries with different levels of dependence on external finance. Better governance mitigates credit market imperfections by increasing transparency and accountability and reducing government-policy distortions, promoting productive investment and entrepreneurship development, with a disproportionate impact on sectors that depend on external finance. This paper indeed finds that countries with well-functioning governments are better at providing growth and investment environments for the expansion of industries that rely heavily on external finance and the formation of new establishments in these industries, when controlling for financial development. These results are robust to possible reverse causality, different specifications, subsamples and outliers.     

Labour Productivity: A Comparative Analysis of the European Union and United States, 1994–2007

This article confirms that labour productivity in the European economies has continued to slow down in recent years. U.S. productivity growth has been higher than in the EU, but only since 2001. At the same time, both economies have modified previous employment performance: EU employment growth is now higher than in U.S. This article proposes that productivity growth be explained by demand dynamics, and investment in particular, not forgetting the influence of employment, along with other factors such as new technologies.     

Job creation and temporary emigration: the Albanian experience1

This paper focuses on job flows and unemployment in Albania during the transition from a closed, communist system to an open, free-market economy, and examines the role of emigration in the restructuring of the country. Our theoretical model indicates that in Albania, temporary emigration may have a significant positive effect on hiring in the private sector, reducing unemployment. Using sectoral data on employment, we illustrate the importance of emigration as an alternative for the Albanian labour force, and we measure the extent to which job ‘destruction’ in some sectors of the economy has been compensated for by job ‘creation’ in others. On these grounds, we compare the progress of Albania with other former socialist countries in Europe.     

Relation between growth and unemployment in a model with labor-force participation and adverse labor institutions

Based on labor search models with an exogenous labor force, existing papers have found a negative relation between long-run economic growth and unemployment. Motivated by the fact that the labor force participation has changed substantially across OECD countries, this paper revisits the long-run relation by taking account of endogenous labor-force participation. We find that, via the effects on employment, changes in labor market institutions may increase or decrease long-run economic growth. Moreover, depending upon the effects on the labor force and employment, these labor market institutions may increase or decrease unemployment rates in the long run. Thus, changes in labor market institutions lead to a non-monotone relation between long-run economic growth and unemployment that is consistent with the data.