The impact of strict employment protection legislation (EPL) on unemployment is still uncertain. However, evidence in literature points to the hiring and firing provisions of EPL being the source of some of the labour market rigidity in South Africa.Hiring and firing provisions comprise a number of elements such as severance pay, dismissal procedures, probationary employment and temporary work arrangements. This research investigates the impact of these measures on the hiring and firing decision through a survey questionnaire distributed to approximately 20 000 small business respondents, who were also tested on the impact of EPL on small business in creating new jobs.The purpose of the research was therefore to contribute to the literature on the role which EPL plays in the hiring and firing decision, and ultimately on unemployment.The results of the research point to a still strong perception that EPL in South Africa is strict despite evidence to the contrary, and that small business respondents believe procedural elements play a significant role in their hiring and firing decision, but some uncertainty with regard to the role of severance pay. The strongest indication was the perception of the regulatory burden of EPL faced by small businesses. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

We examine how speed of automation is affected by different employment protection regimes - one with lenient and one with stringent regulation. To assess we examine how occupations shares in the UK, US, Germany and Spain has changed from 1991-2013. According to our estimates, we find that the speed, of which high-risk occupations shrink over time, slows down in countries with a stringent EPL, Germany and Spain, regime relative to lenient EPL levels, the UK and US.

Since the employment protection legislation inquiry En modern arbetsrätt was published, thedebate on employment protection has gained momentum. The inquiry has had to resistcriticism, among other things for not strengthening the balance between employers andemployees. A general review of the research used in the inquiry shows that sociologicalresearch has been used to a relatively small extent, in favor of research of a more economicnature. This entails a risk that valuable sociological aspects linked to employment may havebeen overlooked or underestimated. With the study, we intend to highlight the sociologicalaspect of the issue of temporary employment and employment protection to broaden thediscussion. In our study, we examine the research that the inquiry is based on regarding thesociological part of temporary employment and compare it with a literature review weproduce about temporary employment. This study shows that the sociological aspect of theEPL inquiry is underemphasized and that there are other studies that highlight valuablesociological points that are not included in the inquiry. In the comparison between theinquiry's research and our literature review, it is in particular the employee perspective andthe connection between temporary employment and health that differ where our sourceshighlight these aspects in a significantly clearer way. / Sedan utredningen En modern arbetsrätt publicerades har debatten om anställningsskydd tagit fart. Utredningen har fått motstå kritik, bland annat för att inte stärka balansen mellan arbetsgivare och arbetstagare. En översiktlig genomgång av den forskning som använts i utredningen visar att sociologisk forskning använts i relativt liten utsträckning, till förmån för forskning av mer ekonomisk karaktär, såsom nationalekonomisk forskning. Detta innebär en risk för att värdefulla sociologiska aspekter kopplat till anställningar kan ha förbisetts eller underskattats. Med studien avser vi att lyfta den sociologiska aspekten i frågan om visstidsanställningar och anställningsskydd för att bredda diskussionen. I vår studie undersöker vi forskningen som utredningen utgått från gällande den sociologiska delen om visstidsanställningar och jämför med en litteraturöversikt vi tar fram. Denna studie visar att den sociologiska aspekten i las-utredningen är underbetonad och att det finns andra studier som lyfter värdefulla sociologiska poänger som inte finns med i utredningen. I jämförelsen mellan utredningens forskning och vår litteraturöversikt är det i synnerhet arbetstagarperspektivet och kopplingen mellan visstidsanställningar och hälsa som skiljer sig där våra källor lyfter dessa aspekter på ett klart tydligare sätt.

This paper examines how a reduction in EPL affects the utility of older workers, by changing the probability of re-employment as well as the risk of becoming unemployed. I generalize the Bailey-Chetty framework and make a one-period model that shows maximizing search behavior of the agent. With data from previous studies, and Swedish authorities, the model is calibrated. The results show predominant negative welfare effects. When the re-employment probability increases more than the risk of becoming unemployed decreases, one will need to increase the compensation less compared to when the risk of becoming unemployed increases more than the re-employment probability. The result also exclusively shows that the current social security fund is too generous and had to be reduced to reach an optimal level. On the other hand, the social security fund is more optimal when the probability of re-employment increases more than the risk of becoming unemployed. Furthermore, the results show that younger workers have a worse welfare from the unemployment insurance fund compared to older workers.

許多公共政策的的實施雖以提升社會福利為出發點, 但往往造成了扭曲 勞動市場的現象。為了瞭解實施公共政策對勞動市場會產生多大的衝擊, 在 本論文中, 我們以台灣為對象, 分別探討兩項公共政策對勞動市場的效果。首 先我們探討全民健康保險制度的實施對勞動市場均衡工資與工時的影響。台 灣自1995年起推行全民健保, 以透過收取健保費的方式來籌措經費。但由於 員工及雇主所負擔的健保費為員工薪資的比例, 如同對員工課徵了一筆薪資 稅, 加上健保費與健保福利兩者在制度中並沒有任何關聯, 因此, 在這樣的機制之下, 我們認為全民健保的實施對勞動市場將可能形成負面衝擊。我們的 實證結果發現, 全民健保的實施的確會使勞動市場均衡工時下降, 但對均衡 工資率的效果則不顯著。其次, 本論文探討勞動保護法令的實施對勞動市場 流動的影響。台灣於1984年實施勞動基準法。由於勞基法是台灣第一套全面 性的勞動法規, 在勞基法實施後, 勞工在就業上受到許多保障, 但相對的, 卻提高了雇主的解雇成本。雇主很可能為了因應較高的解雇成本而減少解雇數 量, 且在雇用新進員工時也變得相對保守, 使勞動市場的流動將會因此降低, 進而可能造成生產力下降等的社會成本。我們的實證結果顯示, 勞基法的實 施會使勞動市場流動下降。而且, 當勞動檢查越嚴格時, 勞動市場流動亦下 降得更嚴重。 / The original purpose of most labor market policies is to enhance social welfare of a specific group of individuals and sustain a fair social relationship. However, the labor market may be distorted by the introduction of these public policies. In this thesis we examine the labor market effects of two public policies in Taiwan. Firstly, we investigates the impacts of national health insurance on the labor market. Taiwan's national health insurance is financed by premiums, which are proportional to an employee's salary. These premiums may introduce distortions to the labor market. Based on repeated cross-sections of individual data we find that, on average, private sector employees' work hours declined relative to their public sector counterparts, while their relative wage rates were almost unchanged with the introduction of national health insurance. Secondly, we investigates the effects of employment protection legislation on the rates of worker flows, job reallocation, and churning flows. Our study’s empirical identification takes advantage of the natural experiment created by Taiwan's enactment of Labor Standards Law, which substantially increases the costs of firing an employee, in 1984 and the subsequent measures of the law’s enforcement. Moreover, our identification also exploits the fact that in Taiwan the stringency of Labor Standards Law’s provisions and the intensity of the law's enforcement vary with establishment size. Our analysis is based on monthly data at the establishment level for the period 1983–1995. We find that Taiwan’s Labor Standards Law and its enforcement measures dampen worker and job turnover rates for medium-sized and large establishments, and the dampening effects vary with establishment size.

In the literature on the emergence of the welfare state, the strength of trade unions and the organized working class is often touted as the primary driving force behind the welfare state project. Furthermore, much of the previous literature has tended to assume union homogeneity across countries, federations, industries and professions. What is conspicuously lacking from the current political science literature is a systematic analysis of real-world trade unions’ choice of labor market advocacy focus. Using a qualitative approach and studying both published union material as well as conducting a number of elite interviews with high-level union officials, this thesis studies the degree to which Swedish trade unions’ labor market policy preferences are defined by the union members’ labor market risk exposure and whether the union adheres to white-collar or blue-collar unionism. While the conclusions indeed suggest that labor market risk and blue-collar/white-collar unionism do have a systematic impact on cartain aspects of trade unions’ labor market advocacy, future “large N” studies utilizing alternative methodological approaches will be required to draw more easily generalizable conclusions.

Le premier chapitre montre l'interdépendance sur le marché locatif entre le formalisme procédural (FP) et les réseaux sociaux locaux. Tandis que le FP augmente le coût de résolution des conflits juridiques entre propriétaires et locataires, les réseaux sociaux présentent l'avantage de pouvoir régler un conflit sans la justice. Le FP permet de rendre plus intéressant aux yeux du propriétaire les individus appartenant à un réseau social. Le deuxième chapitre explique l'importance du soleil sur la demande de régulation du marché locatif. Les pays d'Europe du sud très ensoleillés sont attractifs de par leur douceur de vie. Cette immigration potentielle augmente la tension sur le marché locatif. Pour la réduire, les individus d'Europe du sud développent une complémentarité entre capital social local et régulation. Cette stratégie explique un équilibre méditerranéen où le capital social local et le FP sont élevés. A contrario, l'absence d'attractivité des pays faiblement ensoleillés explique un équilibre anglo-saxon et scandinave aux caractéristiques opposées. Le troisième chapitre explique le soutien pour la régulation du marché du travail par la présence de régulations sur le marché locatif. Lorsque ce dernier est très régulé, les propriétaires sélectionnent les locataires selon leur capacité à payer le loyer. Protéger les contrats à durée indéterminée oblige les entreprises à sélectionner les travailleurs et permet alors aux propriétaires de mieux estimer le risque individuel de licenciement. Nous construisons un modèle où les individus sans emploi demandent plus de régulations et de protections en dépit de l’augmentation du chômage et de la part des contrats temporaires. / The first contribution studies the complementarities between the strength of social networks and the stringency of procedural formalism. While procedural formalism increases the cost of legal dispute resolution between landlords and tenants, social networks allow conflicts to be solved without recourse to justice. Procedural formalism is thus a way to provide a market advantage to local individuals embedded in dense local social networks at the expense of nonlocal agents without access to such networks.The second contribution deals with the importance of the sun on the demand for regulation in the rental market. Southern European countries with good climate amenities are attractive by their mildness of life. This potential immigration increases the pressure on the rental market. To reduce it, individuals in Southern Europe develop complementarities between social capital and local regulations. This strategy explains a Mediterranean equilibrium characterized by high levels of local social capital and procedural formalism. Conversely, the lack of attractiveness of countries with low climate amenities leads to an Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian equilibrium with opposite features.The third contribution explains the support for labor market regulation by the presence of regulations on the rental market. When the rental market is very regulated, landlords screen applicants with regard to their ability to pay the rent. Protecting regular jobs offers a second-best technology to sort workers, thereby increasing the rental market size. We provide a model where non-employed workers demand protected jobs despite unemployment and the share of short-term jobs increase.

Cette thèse analyse l'effet de la législation de protection de l'emploi sur le taux de chômage, les salaires et la productivité des entreprises. En particulier, je m'intéresse dans cette thèse à l’effet de la réglementation des licenciements et des contrats de travail temporaires. Cette question de recherche est motivée par le fait que dans de nombreux pays de l’OCDE, la législation combine des coûts de licenciements élevés et des restrictions faibles sur les contrats temporaires, ce qui entraîne, d’après un certain nombre d’économistes, une segmentation du marché du travail. Le premier chapitre défend l’idée qu’il est important de comprendre les mécanismes qui expliquent le choix des entreprises de signer des contrats temporaires ou permanents afin d'évaluer l’effet de la protection de l’emploi. Ce chapitre analyse un problème de contrat dynamique entre un travailleur averse au risque et un employeur neutre vis-à-vis du risque. Dans ce chapitre, je soutiens notamment que le choix du type d'emploi est déterminé par un arbitrage entre les gains associés au partage du risque qu’offre un emploi permanent et les gains associés à la flexibilité qu’offre un emploi temporaire. Le deuxième chapitre construit un modèle du marché du travail caractérisé par des frictions de recherche et d’appariement, dans lequel le contrat dynamique du chapitre 1 est intégré. Je propose ainsi un modèle dans lequel l’allocation des agents au sein des différents types d’emplois est déterminée de façon endogène par des considérations reliées au partage du risque. Le modèle, calibré pour reproduire les caractéristiques du marché du travail en France durant les années 2000, suggère que les contrats temporaires ont tendance à augmenter la productivité des entreprises mais également le taux de chômage. Le dernier chapitre propose un modèle de cycle de vie visant à évaluer les effets des coûts de licenciement sur l’emploi et les salaires en fonction du niveau d’éducation et d’expérience. Le modèle est calibré sur les données d’enquête sur la main d’œuvre en France durant les années 2000. Une série d'expériences contrefactuelles indiquent que les coûts de licenciement ont un effet négatif sur l’emploi, concentré principalement sur les jeunes travailleurs avec un niveau d’éducation faible. En revanche, cet effet semble être négligeable pour les travailleurs avec un niveau d'expérience et d'éducation élevé. / This thesis analyzes the effect of employment protection on labor market outcomes. The thesis focuses on the impact of firing restrictions and the regulation of temporary contracts. In many OECD countries, the employment protection legislation combines high firing restrictions and relatively lax regulation of temporary jobs which is, according to several economists, a source of labor market segmentation. The first chapter argues that analyzing the effect of employment protection requires to understand how economic agents choose between permanent and temporary contracts. This chapter examines a dynamic employment contract between a risk-averse worker and a risk-neutral firm. I argue in this chapter that the choice between a permanent and a temporary contract is driven by a trade-off between efficient risk-sharing and flexibility. The second chapter builds a model of the labor market with search frictions, in which the contracting problem of chapter 1 is embedded. Thus, this chapter proposes a model in which the allocation of agents into permanent and temporary jobs is endogenous to risk-sharing considerations. The model is calibrated to the features of the French labor market during the 2000s and indicates that temporary contracts tend to increase productivity but unemployment as well. The third chapter proposes a life-cycle model to evaluate the effect of firing costs across different experience and education groups. The model is calibrated using a French labor force survey dataset. Policy experiments suggest that firing costs have a negative effect on employment, which is concentrated on low experience and education workers.

Several interesting findings emerged from this study. First, strong labour movements still failed to successfully bargain for employment protections due to resistance from employers to encroachments on their institutionalized managerial prerogatives. Second, governments favoured a policy of abstentionism and acquiescence to the collective-laissez-faire tradition until the critical juncture of the 1960s and 1970s. Third, the increasing power resources of trade unions and a deteriorating socio-economic climate created a window of opportunity for bold government action to improve industrial relations, albeit without the consent of employers, and at first, unions. Fourth, contrary to the liberalizing pressures one would expect to find in an archetypical free market economy, the UK has implemented far more statutory protections than deregulatory reforms. Fifth, in contrast to its traditional non-intervention in industrial relations and reputation for worker-protective regulations, Swedish governments have enacted numerous statutes, both restricting and freeing managerial prerogatives in the hiring and firing process. Sixth, statutory employment protections became an independent set of institutional power resources for unions in the long run, serving their organizational and representational interests in important ways. Seventh, unions and left parties consistently defended and advanced the policy preferences of their core constituencies in secure employment by privileging the job security of regular contracts. Eighth, employers and parties on the right of the political spectrum consistently opposed restrictions on the managerial capacity to hire and fire at will, especially for small businesses. Nineth, to increase flexibility without threatening the stability of regular contracts, reforms over the years had to foster atypical forms of work, creating a regulatory gap between permanent and temporary employment, particularly in Sweden. Tenth, differences exist between job security in the statute books and job security in action, particularly in the UK where this gap pervades all aspects of the unfair dismissal system. These findings suggest employment protection legislation has developed in ways far more complex, dynamic and contradictory than is commonly assumed by prominent theories of comparative political economy. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines how and why employment protection legislation developed in the United Kingdom and Sweden in the ways that it did from its early beginnings to the present period. It hopes to offer answers to questions about the initial impetus for statutory regulation, the number, content and impact of significant legislative changes and the preferences of key stakeholders with material interests in the policymaking process. It does this by drawing on a variety of both primary and secondary source materials, including employment protection databases, parliamentary records and research publications. At the same time, it assesses the explanatory merit of dominant theories in the political economy literature by testing them against voluminous empirical evidence and provides a multi-factorial account to fill the gaps in the existing body of knowledge.