International Political Spillovers: the case of labor market regulation

This paper explores how the political support for Labour Market Regulation (LMR) is affected by economic and political integration in a two country OLG model. We model LMR as wage regulation and analyse three institutional settings: Autarchy, Economic Union and Political Union. In Autarchy capital cannot flow across borders and each country sets its most preferred level of regulation. In the Economic Union capital markets are integrated, while political decisions are not. In the Political Union a common level of LMR is set at a centralized level. In Autarchy, LMR may endogenously arise if the economy is dynamically efficient. In this case, despite the distortions generated in the labour market, LMR increases the welfare of the young, because it raises their permanent income, their savings and the steady state capital stock. In the Economic Union, capital outflows make the implementation of LMR more costly and provide incentives for each country to undercut the rival in order to attract capital.Thus, a race-to-the-bottom takes place and the steady state level of LMR decreases, harming the young individuals. The Political Union restores, under symmetry, the autarchic outcome and welfare levels. The asymmetric case is also analysed.political economy; economic integration; unemployment

Capital Markets Integration and Labor Market Institutions

A major development in recent decades in industrialised countries is the decline in national savings rates. Over the same period, the labour’s share of national income has also declined in many industrialised countries. This paper seeks to provide a unified account of these developments. We show that globalization, in the form of increased capital mobility, provides incentives to implement labour market reforms that raise the returns to capital and improve efficiency. Nevertheless, in a world where aggregate savings reflect life-cycle motives and are mainly performed out of labour income, the associated fall in the labour share reduces aggregate savings and the pace of capital accumulation. This inefficient outcome is due to competition for capital between countries generating negative externalities.Unemployment, Factor mobility, Political economy, Globalization

Effects of Employment Protection on Worker and Job Flows: Evidence from the 1990 Italian Reform

This paper uses the Italian Social Security employer-employee panel to study the effects of the Italian reform of 1990 on worker and job flows. We exploit the fact that this reform increased unjust dismissal costs for firms below 15 employees, while leaving dismissal costs unchanged for bigger firms, to set up a natural experiment research design. We find that the increase in dismissal costs decreased accessions and separations for workers in small relative to big firms, especially in sectors with higher employment volatility. Moreover, we find that the reform reduced firms' employment adjustments on the internal margin as well as entry rates while increasing exit rates.

The Age-Productivity Gradient: Evidence from a Sample of F1 Drivers

Aging is a global phenomenon. If older individuals are less productive, an aging working population can lower aggregate productivity, economic growth and fiscal sustainability. Therefore, understanding the age-productivity gradient is key in a aging society. However, estimating the effect of aging on productivity is a daunting task. First, it requires clean measures of productivity. Wages are not such measures to the extent that they reward other workers attributes than their productivity. Second, unobserved heterogeneity at workers, firms and workers/firms level challenges the identification of the age-productivity gradient in cross-sectional data. Longitudinal data attenuate some identification issues, but give rise to the problem of partialling out the effect of aging from the pure effect of time. Third, the study of the age-productivity link requires investigating the role of experience and of seniority. We tackle these issues by focussing on a sample of Gran Prix Formula One drivers and show that the age-productivity link has an inverted U-shape profile, with a peak at around the age of 30-32.Aging, individual effects, firm effects, match effects, Formula One

Effects of employment protection and product market regulations on the Italian labor market

Labor market regulations have often being blamed for high and persistent unemployment in Europe, but evidence on their impact remains mixed. More recently, attention has turned to the impact of product market regulations on employment growth. This paper analyzes how labor and product market regulations interact to affect turnover and employment. We present a matching model which illustrates how barriers to entry in the product market mitigate the impact of labor market deregulation. We, then, use the Italian Social Security employer-employee panel to study the interaction between barriers to entry and dismissal costs. We exploit the fact that costs for unjust dismissals in Italy increased for firms below 15 employees relative to bigger firms after 1990. We find that the increase in dismissal costs after 1990 decreased accessions and separations in small relative to big firms, especially for women. Moreover, consistent with our model, we find evidence that the increase in dismissal costs had smaller effects on turnover for women in sectors faced with strict product market regulations.Barriers to entry, costs of unjust dismissals, European Unemployment

Employment protection legislation and wages

In a perfect labor market severance payments can have no real effects as they can be undone by a properly designed labor contract (Lazear 1990). We give empirical content to this proposition by estimating the effects of EPL on entry wages and on the tenure-wage profile in a quasi-experimental setting. We consider a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees, leaving firing costs unchanged for bigger firms. Estimates which account for the endogeneity of the treatment status due to workers and firms sorting around the 15 employees threshold show no effect of the reform on entry wages and a decrease of the returns to tenure by around 20% in the first year and by 8% over the first two years. We interpret these findings as broadly consistent with Lazear’s (1990) prediction that firms make workers prepay the severance cost. JEL Classification: E24, J63, J65Costs of Unjust Dismissals, Regression Discontinuity Design, Severance Payments

Who Pays for it? The Heterogeneous Wage Effects of Employment Protection Legislation

This paper estimates the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on workers' individual wages in a quasi-experimental setting, exploiting a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees and left firing costs unchanged for bigger firms. Accounting for the endogeneity of the treatment status, we find that the slight average wage reduction (between –0.4 and –0.1 percent) that follows the increase in EPL hides highly heterogeneous effects. Workers who change firm during the reform period suffer a drop in the entry wage, while incumbent workers are left unaffected. Results also indicate that the negative wage effect of the EPL reform is stronger on young blue collars and on workers at the low-end of the wage distribution. Finally, workers in low-employment regions suffer higher wage reductions after the reform. This pattern suggests that the ability of the employers to shift EPL costs onto wages depends on workers' and firms' relative bargaining power.Costs of Unjust Dismissals, Severance Payments, Policy Evaluation, Endogeneity of Treatment Status

Who Pays for It? The Heterogeneous Wage Effects of Employment Protection Legislation

Theory predicts that the wage effects of government-mandated severance payments depend on workers' and firms' relative bargaining power. This paper estimates the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on workers' individual wages in a quasi-experimental setting, exploiting a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees and left firing costs unchanged for bigger firms. Accounting for the endogeneity of the treatment status, we find that high-bargaining power workers (stayers, white collar and workers above 45) are almost left unaffected by the increase in EPL, while low-bargaining power workers (movers, blue collar and young workers) suffer a drop both in the wage level and its growth rate.costs of unjust dismissals, severance payments, policy evaluation, endogeneity of treatment status

Employment Protection Legislation and Wages

In a perfect labor market severance payments can have no real effects as they can be undone by a properly designed labor contract (Lazear 1990). We give empirical content to this proposition by estimating the effects of EPL on entry wages and on the tenure-wage profile in a quasi-experimental setting. We consider a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees, leaving firing costs unchanged for bigger firms. Estimates which account for the endogeneity of the treatment status due to workers and firms sorting around the 15 employees threshold show no effect of the reform on entry wages and a decrease of the returns to tenure by around 20% in the first year and by 8% over the first two years. We interpret these findings as broadly consistent with Lazear’s (1990) prediction that firms make workers prepay the severance cost.Costs of Unjust Dismissals, Severance Payments, Regression Discontinuity Design

The Effects of Employment Protection on the Italian Labour Market

This paper uses the Italian Social Security employer-employee panel to study the effect of a reform that introduced a cost for unjust dismissals only for firms below 15 employees, while leaving firing costs unchanged for bigger firms. We find that the increase in dismissal costs decreased accessions and separations in small relative to big firms, the more so in sectors with higher employment volatility. Moreover, the reform reduced firms’ entry rates while increasing the exit rate. We also find evidence that higher EPL flattened employment policies over the cycleCosts of Unjust Dismissals, European Unemployment, Firms’ Entry and Exit, Employment Volatility