Relaxation of employment protection and labour reallocation
Abstract
Purpose
Employment law reform enforced in Estonia in mid-2009 provides a good opportunity to examine the outcomes of employment protection legislation (EPL). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the reduction in EPL on labour reallocation.
Design/methodology/approach
The author exploits the micro-data of the Labour Force Survey to estimate the probabilities of one-year worker flows with probit models, and uses a difference in differences (DID) approach to identify the effects of the EPL reform.
Findings
The author finds that the reduction in EPL seems to have increased the probability of transitions out of employment. At the same time, she does not find any significant effect of this reform on the probability of flows into employment. The evaluation also gives evidence of a lowered probability of job-to-job transitions resulting from the reduction in EPL.
Research limitations/implications
In this paper, the DID estimation is conducted by using Lithuanians as the control group for Estonians. However, it should be noted that this approach assumes strong similarities between these countries in order to obtain reliable estimates.
Originality/value
The findings of this paper raise the possibility that the reduction in EPL alone may not have been sufficient for achieving a better reallocation of labour and this is important to consider in the context of further developments in other labour market institutions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
JEL Classifications — J60, K31
The author would like to thank Tairi Rõõm, Jaanika Meriküll, Orsolya Soosaar, Karsten Staehr, four anonymous referees and participants in the internal presentations of the paper in the Bank of Estonia for their valuable comments or other forms of input. The author would also like to thank Statistics Estonia and Statistics Lithuania for providing the data of the Labour Force Surveys and gratefully acknowledges the help of Aurelijus Dabušinskas in acquiring the Lithuanian data. All remaining errors are wholly the responsibility of the author alone.
Citation
Malk, L. (2014), "Relaxation of employment protection and labour reallocation", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 35 No. 6, pp. 898-926. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-11-2013-0253
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited