The Impact of Labour Market Institutions on Productivity in a Sectoral Approach

Book excerpt: This research paper aims for an empirical validation of the impact of labour institutions on productivity growth. The main objective of this study is to analyse labour and economic growth tendencies of the period between 1980 and 2008 in various OECD countries. In our estimations we followed a specific taxonomy to identify the main features of productivity (output per capita) growth in different labour-skilled branches. Besides determining the sectoral differences of labour demand by standard comparative statistics, we used in our model specification a dynamic panel regression method.All in all, we conclude that the high-skilled branches achieved better economic growth performance than the lower-skilled ones in most of the OECD countries. Analysing the time series panel data of these countries we also claim that productivity growth was negatively correlated with unemployment benefits and employment legislation in the long run.