Wage compression and employment in Europe: First evidence from the structure of earnings survey 2002

This paper aims at examining wage compression in Europe using the publicly available data on wages drawn from the Structure of Earnings Survey 2002. By wage compression, it is meant here that the difference in productivity across workers or firms is only partly reflected by the difference in wages. The paper specifically considers the existence of wage compression both across occupations and levels of education by means of cross-sectional econometric analysis. Looking at wage compression across occupations, robust evidence gives some support to the conventional view that there is a compressed wage distribution in Europe. Wage compression mainly occurs in continental and southern countries, whilst no compression is detected in Anglo-Saxon countries and mixed evidence is found in Northern European countries.Wage structure, wage differentials by skills, demand for labour, European Union, wage compression, Mourre

Did the pattern of aggregate employment growth change in the euro area in the late 1990s?

The paper examines whether the pattern of growth in euro area employment seen in the period 1997-2001 differed from that recorded in the past and what could be the reasons for that. First, a standard employment equation is estimated for the euro area as a whole. This shows that the lagged impact of both output growth and real labour cost growth, together with a productivity trend and employment “inertia”, can account for most of the employment developments between 1970 and the early 1990s. Conversely, these traditional determinants can only explain part of the employment development seen in recent years (1997-2001). Second, the paper shows sound evidence of a structural break in the aggregate employment equation in the late 1990s. Third, the paper provides some tentative explanations for this change in aggregate employment developments, using in particular country panels of institutional variables and of active labour market policies but also cross-sectional analyses. Among the relevant factors likely to have contributed to rising aggregate employment in recent years are changes in the sectoral composition of euro area employment, the strong development of part-time jobs, lower labour tax rates and possibly less stringent employment protection legislation and greater subsidies to private employment. JEL Classification: C2, E24, H50, J23Active labour market policies, Aggregate employment, Demand for labour, euro area, Labour market institutions

Institutions and performance in European labour markets: taking a fresh look at evidence

This paper presents a selective survey of the recent literature on labour market institutions and performance and offers new empirical EU-based evidence on the impact of labour market reforms on employment and labour market adjustment. While the literature traditionally treats labour market institutions as exogenous, attention shifted recently towards understanding the underlying causes of specific institutional arrangements. As a consequence, the literature highlights the great importance of an efficient policy design exploiting these interactions wisely and identifies general principles for achieving an efficient policy design at both macro and micro levels. While empirical evidence does no show a major change in terms of intensity of labour market reform after the setting of the Economic and Monetary Union and the creation of the euro, the reforms aiming at strengthening the labour market attachment of vulnerable groups tend to have been successful both in raising their employment and increasing labour market adjustment.'Institutions and Performance in European Labour Markets', 'labour market functioning; political economy; endogeneity; institutions; policy design'; Arpaïa, Mourre

Labour market institutions and labour market performance: A survey of the literature

This paper presents a selective survey of the recent literature on labour market institutions. It describes the different empirical approaches used to explore the nexus between labour market institutions and labour market performance. It stresses that the effect of institutions is complex in both stock and flow models and that it is also crucial to take into account the interactions they generate among themselves and with macroeconomic shocks.labour market performance, labour market institutions, redistributive policies, unemployment dynamics, Arpaia, Mourre

Monitoring short-term labour cost developments in the European Union: which indicators to trust?

This paper reviews the available indicators in the European Union to monitor short-term labour cost developments, i.e. of quarterly frequency, with a special focus on the euro area. It clarifies concepts, provides information on availability and compares the indicators against various statistical criteria, their historical track record and their predictive capacities. The paper mainly focuses on the supply side, particularly considering labour cost developments in terms of risks for price stability. It is found that no single indicator can be considered clearly superior and able to replace the others without loss of information, as each indicator concentrates on a specific dimension of labour costs and is affected by statistical flaws. The assessment of short-term wage developments should reasonably be based on the broadest available set of statistics so as to get a balanced and careful view. The empirical analysis shows that when forecasting core inflation one-step ahead for the euro area as a whole, the labour cost index and the ECFIN wage indicator display the higher predictive accuracy. Moreover, composite labour cost indicators (encompassing at least two indicators) clearly outperform any single wage indicator. Compensation per employee empirically appears the best, albeit weak, leading wage indicator of private consumption.Labour cost indicators, wages and compensations, short-term macroeconomic developments, core inflation, private consumption, leading indicators, Mourre, Thiel

Wage diversity in the euro area - an overview of labour cost differentials across industries

This Paper provides an overview of the magnitude of sectoral wage differentials in the euro area as a whole. Even when adjusting for structural sectoral features such as the skill structure or the proportion of part-timers, average wage levels in services are substantially lower than in manufacturing. The paper also studies how the euro area wage structure compares with that of the United States and the United Kingdom. It discusses some possible determinants of intersectoral wage differentials in the euro area and their likely implications from a policy perspective. A number of worker characteristics (e.g. age, skills, the proportion of temporary or self-employed) are highly correlated with the structure of wage differentials. At the same time, wage differentials are also highly correlated with sector-specific features such as average firm size or capital intensity. Finally, the paper presents some stylised facts on how the euro area wage structure has evolved since the early 1980s.Intersectoral wage differential; wage determination; euro area.

Adjustment in the Euro Area and Regulation of Product and Labour Markets: An Empirical Assessment

This paper assesses the adjustment mechanism in the euro area. Results show that the real exchange rate (REER) adjusts in such a way to redress cyclical divergences and that after monetary unification REER dynamics have become less reactive to country-specific shocks but also less persistent. It is found that regulations, notably affecting price and wage nominal flexibility and employment protection, play a role in the adjustment mechanism. Indicators of product and labour regulations appear to matter forboth the reaction of price competitiveness to cyclical divergences (differences between national and euro-area output gaps) and for the inertia of competitiveness indicators. Moreover, regulations appear to matter also for the extent to which common shocks may end up producing country-specific effects on the price competitiveness, as revealed by their interaction with proxies of unobservable common shocks along the lines of the methodology developed in Blanchard and Wolfers (2000). In light of the tendency towards less stringent regulations in past decades, the results seem consistent with the observed reduction in the persistence of inflation differentials, and has have implications for the design of adjustment-friendly product and labour market reforms.

The determinants of part-time work in EU countries: empirical investigations with macro-panel data - Hielke Buddelmeyer, Gilles Mourre and Melanie Ward

This paper aims to identify the contribution of the business cycle and structural factors to the development of part-time employment in the EU-15 countries, through the exploitation of both cross-sectional and time series variations over the past two decades. This analysis is used to comment on whether part-time jobs have been used as a flexible work arrangement by firms in the EU-15 over this period.Key results include that the business cycle, as measured by either the output gap or real GDP growth, is found to exert a negative effect on part-time employment developments. This is consistent with firms utilising part-time employment as a means of adjusting their labour force to economic conditions. Correspondingly, involuntary part-time employment is found to be countercyclical, being higher in troughs of economic activity. Splitting our sample by age and gender groups reveals a very significant effect of the business cycle on the rate of part-time work for young and male prime-age workers. Conversely, the effect is very weak for women and insignificant for older workers.employment, part-time employment, labour supply, labour market policies, business cycle, child benefits, unemployment benefits, trade unions, employment protection legislation, temporary jobs, female participation, schooling, wages and non wages costs, work force, Buddelmeyer, Mourre, Ward