Documents Bassanini, Andrea 18 results

"Exploiting a unique dataset including cross-country comparable hiring and separation rates by type of transition for 24 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and 13 years, we study the effect of dismissal regulations on different types of gross worker flows, defined as one-year transitions. We use both a difference-in-difference approach – in which the impact of regulations is identified by exploiting likely cross-industry differences in their impact – and standard time-series analysis – in which the effect of regulations is identified through regulatory changes over time. We find that the more restrictive the regulation, the smaller is the rate of within-industry job-to-job transitions, in particular towards permanent jobs. By contrast, we find no significant effect as regards separations involving an industry change or leading to non-employment. The extent of reinstatement in the case of unfair dismissal appears to be the most important regulatory determinant of gross worker flows. We also present a large battery of robustness checks that suggest that our findings are robust."

"There is no or limited consensus on the quantitative impact of institutions on unemployment, which has led some to question the case for structural reforms. Recent studies suggest also that institutions interact with each other and cannot be analysed in isolation. In this paper, we estimate a standard reduced-form model to explore the institutional determinants of unemployment and assess its robustness using a large battery of robustness checks. We show that, although the impact of each individual policy varies across countries owing to policy interactions, the simple linear model can be used to draw inferences for countries with an average mix of institutions. The model is then extended to encompass systemic interactions, in which individual policies interact with the overall institutional framework. We find relatively robust evidence of broad reform complementarities."

"This paper reviews the literature on the impact of work on health. We consider work along two dimensions: (i) the intensive margin, i.e. how many hours an individual works and (ii) the extensive margin, i.e. whether an individual is in employment or not, independent of the number of hours worked. We show that most of the evidence on the negative health impact of work found in the literature is based on situations in which workers have essentially no control (no choice) over the amount of work they provide. In essence, what is detrimental to health is not so much work per se as much as the gap which may exist between the actual and the desired amount of work, both at the intensive and extensive margins."

"I examine the effect of labour market policies and institutions on the transmission of macroeconomic shocks to the labour market, using both aggregate and industry-level annual data for 23 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and up to 29 years. I find that high and progressive labour taxes and generous unemployment benefits amplify labour income fluctuations. By contrast, statutory minimum wages reduce the difference in the sensitivity of wages to aggregate shocks between low-wage and high-wage industries. Dismissal regulations are found to mitigate the impact of shocks on both earnings and employment. Moreover, this mitigation effect is greater in industries where firms have a greater propensity to make staffing changes through dismissals."

"We develop a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of barriers to entry on workplace training. Our theoretical model yields ambiguous predictions on the sign of this relationship. On the one hand, given the number of firms, a deregulation reduces profits per unit of output, and thereby reduces training. On the other hand, the number of firms increases, and so does the output gain from training, which facilitates the investment in training. Our numerical simulation shows that for reasonable values of the parameters a negative relationship prevails. We use repeated cross section data from the European Labour Force Survey to investigate empirically the relationship between product market regulation and training incidence in a sample of 15 European countries and 13 industrial sectors, which we follow for about 7 years. Our empirical results are unambiguous and show that an increase in product market deregulation generates a sizeable increase in training incidence."

"Exploiting a unique dataset including cross-country comparable hiring and separation rates by type of transition for 24 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and 13 years, we study the effect of dismissal regulations on different types of gross worker flows, defined as one-year transitions. We use both a difference-in-difference approach – in which the impact of regulations is identified by exploiting likely cross-industry differences in their impact – and standard time-series analysis – in which the effect of regulations is identified through regulatory changes over time. We find that the more restrictive the regulation, the smaller is the rate of within-industry job-to-job transitions, in particular towards permanent jobs. By contrast, we find no significant effect as regards separations involving an industry change or persistent joblessness. The extent of reinstatement in the case of unfair dismissal appears to be the most important regulatory determinant of gross worker flows. We also present a large battery of robustness checks that suggest that our findings are robust."

"I examine the effect of labour market policies and institutions on the transmission of macroeconomic shocks to the labour market, using both aggregate and industry-level annual data for 23 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and up to 29 years. I find that high and progressive labour taxes and generous unemployment benefits amplify labour income fluctuations. By contrast, statutory minimum wages reduce the difference in the sensitivity of wages to aggregate shocks between low-wage and high-wage industries. Dismissal regulations are found to mitigate the impact of shocks on both earnings and employment. Moreover, this mitigation effect is greater in industries where firms have a greater propensity to make staffing changes through dismissals. Stringent dismissal regulations also appear to reduce the counter-cyclicality of the earnings dispersion between high and low-educated labour."

"We investigate the impact of labour market policies on labour and multifactor productivity with industry-level data. First and foremost, labour market policies can influence average measured productivity through their impact on employment. Other things equal, employment growth tends to be associated with lower average measured labour productivity growth as more low-skilled workers enter the workforce. However, policies can also have sizeable direct effects on individual productivity levels and/or growth by creating incentives for workers to invest in training, facilitating reallocation of resources to their most productive uses and generating or maintaining high-quality job matches. We find that employment protection legislation, minimum wages, parental leave and unemployment benefits influence productivity through multiple channels, over and above their impact on employment levels."