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Euro-Productivity and Euro-Jobs since the 1960s: Which Institutions Really Mattered?

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Author Info
Gayle Allard
Peter H. Lindert

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Abstract

How have labor market institutions and welfare-state transfers affected jobs and productivity in Western Europe, relative to industrialized Pacific Rim countries? Orthodox criticisms of European government institutions are right in some cases and wrong in others. Protectionist labor-market policies such as employee protection laws seem to have become more costly since about 1980, not through overall employment effects, but through the net human-capital cost of protecting senior male workers at the expense of women and youth. Product-market regulations in core sectors may also have reduced GDP, though here the evidence is less robust. By contrast, high general tax levels have shed the negative influence they might have had in the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly, other institutions closer to the core of the welfare state have caused no net harm to European jobs and growth. The welfare state%u2019s tax-based social transfers and coordinated wage bargaining have not harmed either employment or GDP. Even unemployment benefits do not have robustly negative effects.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12460.

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Date of creation: Aug 2006
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12460

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N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Growth and Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913
N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Alberto Behar, 2009. "Tax Wedges, Unemployment Benefits and Labour Market Outcomes in the New EU Members," AUCO Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 3(1), pages 069-092, March. [Downloadable!]
  2. Dew-Becker, Ian & Gordon, Robert J, 2008. "The Role of Labour Market Changes in the Slowdown of European Productivity Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 6722, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Karl Aiginger & Alois Guger & Thomas Leoni & Ewald Walterskirchen, 2007. "Reform Perspectives on Welfare State Models in Global Capitalism," WIFO Working Papers 303, WIFO. [Downloadable!]
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