Product Market Regulation and Labor Market Outcomes: How can Deregulation Create Jobs?

This paper reports on ongoing research on the interactions between product regulation and labor market outcomes. In particular, I summarize work on the employment effects of shop-closing regulation in the retail and other related sectors. Evidence on employment in the retail sector from Germany, the Netherlands and the United States suggests that the regulatory regime might play an important role; I argue that a nonnegligible comp o nent of the recent Dutch employment miracle could be attributed to product market deregulation, in particular liberalization of shop-closing laws effected in the mid-1990s. I sketch a model, based on Burda and Weil (1999), which can rationalize potential public interest aspects of such regulations as well as identify their employment and output costs.Product market regulation, retail trade, employment

What kind of shock was it? Regional Integration and Structural Change in Germany after Unification

Eastern Germany’s recovery from the "unification shock" has been characterized by deep structural change – with apparent repercussions for the West as well – and an integration process involving both capital deepening (extensive and intensive investment) and labor thinning (net out-migration). I propose a constant-returns neoclassical model of economic integration which can account for these facts. Adjustment costs determine dynamics and steady state regional distribution of production factors. The model also explains persistent wage and capital rate-of-return differentials along the equilibrium path. Under competitive conditions, observed factor price differentials contain information on those adjustment costs.German Reunification, Regional Integration, Costs of Adjustment, Capital Mobility, Migration

Preferences for Collective versus Individualised Wage Setting

Standard models of equilibrium unemployment assume exogenous labour market institutions and flexible wage determination. This paper models wage rigidity and collective bargaining endogenously, when workers differ by observable skill and may adopt either individualized or collective wage bargaining. In the calibrated model, a substantial fraction of workers and firms as well as the median voter prefer collective bargaining to the decentralised regime. A fundamental distortion of the separation decision represented by employment protection (a firing tax) is necessary for such preferences to emerge. Endogenizing collective bargaining can significantly modify comparative statics effects of policy arising in a single-regime setting.wage rigidity, employment protection, equilibrium unemployment

From Reunification to Economic Integration: Productivity and the Labor Market in Eastern Germany

macroeconomics, Reunification, Economic Integration, Productivity, Labor Market, Eastern Germany

What Explains the German Labor Market Miracle in the Great Recession?

Germany experienced an even deeper fall in GDP in the Great Recession than the United States with little employment loss. Employers’ reticence to hire in the preceding expansion - associated in part with a lack of confidence it would last - contributed to an employment shortfall equivalent to 40 percent of the missing employment decline in the recession. Another 20 percent may be explained by wage moderation. A third important element was the widespread adoption of working time accounts, which permit employers to avoid overtime pay if hours per worker average to standard hours over a window. We find that this provided disincentives for employers to lay off workers in the downturn. While the overall cuts in hours per worker were consistent with the severity of the Great Recession, reduction of working time account balances substituted for traditional government-sponsored short time work.unemployment, Germany, Great Recession, short time work, working time accounts, Hartz reforms, extensive vs. intensive employment margin

Payroll Taxes, Social Insurance and Business Cycles

Payroll taxes represent a major distortionary influence of governments on labor markets. This paper examines the role of payroll taxation and the social safety net for cyclical fluctuations in a nonmonetary economy with labor market frictions and unemployment insurance, when the latter is only imperfectly related to search effort. A balanced social insurance budget renders gross wages more rigid over the cycle and, as a result, strengthens the model's endogenous propagation mechanism. For conventional calibrations, the model generates a negatively sloped Beveridge curve as well as substantial volatility and persistence of vacancies and unemployment.business cycles, labor markets, payroll taxes, unemployment, consumption-tightness puzzle

Payroll Taxes, Social Insurance and Business Cycles

Payroll taxes represent a major distortionary in uence of governments on labor markets. This paper examines the role of payroll taxation and the social safety net for cyclical uctuations in a nonmonetary economy with labor market frictions and unemployment insurance, when the latter is only imperfectly related to search effort. A balanced social insurance budget renders gross wages more rigid over the cycle and, as a result, strengthens the modelÂ’s endogenous propagation mechanism. For conventional calibrations, the model generates a negatively sloped Beveridge curve as well as substantial volatility and persistence of vacancies and unemployment.business cycles, labor markets, payroll taxes, unemployment, consumption-tightness puzzle

What Explains the German Labor Market Miracle in the Great Recession?

Germany experienced an even deeper fall in GDP in the Great Recession than the United States, with little employment loss. Employers' reticence to hire in the preceding expansion, associated in part with a lack of confidence it would last, contributed to an employment shortfall equivalent to 40 percent of the missing employment decline in the recession. Another 20 percent may be explained by wage moderation. A third important element was the widespread adoption of working time accounts, which permit employers to avoid overtime pay if hours per worker average to standard hours over a window of time. We find that this provided disincentives for employers to lay off workers in the downturn. Although the overall cuts in hours per worker were consistent with the severity of the Great Recession, reduction of working time account balances substituted for traditional government-sponsored short-time work.Hartz reforms, working time accounts, short time work, Great Recession, Germany, unemployment, extensive vs. intensive employment margin

TFP Growth in Old and New Europe

Using Solow-Tornqvist residuals as well as two alternative measurements, we present estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in a sample of 30 European economies for the period 1994-2005. In most of Western Europe, we find a deceleration of TFP growth since 2000. However, the economies of New Europe exhibit a higher level of TFP growth overall and have slowed less than those of Old Europe. In the new market economies of Central and Eastern Europe, we nd both high TFP growth as well as acceleration in the second half of the sample. Regression evidence from Western Europe suggests that product market regulation may adversely aect TFP growth and may thus impair convergence.Total factor productivity growth, Solow residual, product and labor market regulation

Solow Residuals without Capital Stocks

For more than fifty years, the Solow decomposition (Solow 1957) has served as the standard measurement of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in economics and management, yet little is known about its precision, especially when the capital stock is poorly measured. Using synthetic data generated from a prototypical stochastic growth model, we explore the quantitative extent of capital measurement error when the initial condition is unknown to the analyst and when capacity utilization and depreciation are endogenous. We propose two alternative measurements which eliminate capital stocks from the decomposition and significantly outperform the conventional Solow residual, reducing the root mean squared error in simulated data by as much as two-thirds. This improvement is inversely related to the sample size as well as proximity to the steady state. As an application, we compute and compare TFP growth estimates using data from the new and old German federal states.Total factor productivity, Solow residual, generalized differences, measurement error, Malmquist index