The purpose of this article is to estimate minimum wage effects on youth employment in the European Union (EU). The analysis employs a panel regression method with fixed effects and uses data for 18 EU member states with statutory minimum wage over the period 1996 to 2011. The analysis is restricted to teenage workers between 15 and 19 years of age and young workers between 20 and 24 years of age. The study finds a negative, statistically significant impact of minimum wage on youth employment, by which the disemployment effect appears to be stronger for teenage workers. The effect remains negative and statistically significant also when controlled for other labour market institutions. Taking into account empirical results, we can conclude that EU countries should be more cautious when setting up minimum wages for young workers, as disemployment effects may have been downplayed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4767447
The paper examines the issue of flexicurity in the EU Member States and studies the association between flexicurity policy components (i.e. employment protection legislation, lifelong learning programs, active and passive labour market policies) and labour and total factor productivity growth in 20 EU Member States over the 19912008 period. The empirical analysis pointed on the existence of large differences in the level of implementation of flexicurity policies across EU Member States, by which the least successful are NMS, especially with regard to active labour market and lifelong learning programs. As regards the relation between flexicurity variables and productivity growth, panel regression estimates showed that active labour market policies and participation in lifelong learning programs have a statistically significant positive association with labour and total factor productivity growth. On the other hand, rigid employment protection and high expenditures for passive labour market policies negatively relate to productivity growth.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4795095
The paper investigates how the transition to a market economy has affected the relationship between wages and productivity across different types of workers and over time. Using a rich longitudinal dataset spanning a ten year period, this study explores this relationship across workers based on age, education and gender in Slovenia. The results indicate that the first ten years of transition to a market economy dramatically altered the relationship between the relative wages and productivity of different types of workers, yet yielded relatively little convergence towards the equilibrium wage relativities one would expect to observe were wages of workers to equal the value of their marginal product. The estimates indicate that relative wage and productivity differentials decreased for older workers, increased for educated workers, and remained relatively constant for women
COBISS.SI-ID: 1251966
This paper investigates the relative importance of internal versus external factors in the setting of wages of newly hired workers. The evidence suggests that external labour market conditions are less important than internal pay structures in determining hiring pay, with internal pay structures binding even more often when there is labour market slack. When explaining their choice firms allude to fairness considerations and the need to prevent a potential negative impact on effort. Despite the lower importance of external factors in all countries there is significant cross-country variation in this respect. Cross-country differences are found to depend on institutional factors (bargaining structures); countries in which collective agreements are more prevalent and collective agreement coverage is higher report to a greater extent internal pay structures as the main determinant of hiring pay. Within-country differences are found to depend on firm and workforce characteristics; there is a strong positive association between the use of external factors in hiring pay amongst higher skilled workers.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1199742
The paper, the first one to empirically examine whether individual accounts internalize the cost of unemployment, estimates the determinants of job finding rates of unemployment benefit recipients under the Chilean program. This is a unique, innovative program that combines social insurance, provided via solidarity funding, with self-insurance in the form of unemployment insurance savings accounts (UISAs). The paper shows that beneficiaries who use solidarity funding are less likely to exit unemployment in early months than those relying on UISAs only. Moreover, job finding rates are found to be positively correlated with pre-separation UISA balances among those that use solidarity funding, but are found to be uncorrelated with balances for those relying on UISAs only. While the findings are consistent with the effects expected under the internalization of unemployment costs via UISAs, they do not pinpoint unambiguously the causal link, as alternative mechanisms may be responsible for the observed correlations, particularly selection into the use of UISAs.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4465879