Employment protection legislation and catching-up [Dataset]

After World War II (WW II), productivity growth in Europe and Japan was driven by catching up with the US. Institutions in Europe were different too and well suited for economic growth through imitation and adaptation of the technology to local circumstances. Catching up is, however, a self defeating process. It ends when the technology frontier is attained or when in case of conditional convergence institutions set a limit to the process of catching up. Once this situation is reached, the existing institutions may no longer be appropriate. Regression analysis on a panel of 21 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries reveals that Employment Protection Legislations (EPL) had a positive impact on productivity growth in the period of rapid convergence in the sixties and seventies. However, from the eighties onwards, the total effect of EPL on labour productivity growth was negative.

第二次世界大战（World War II，WW II）后，欧洲与日本的生产率增长，其核心驱动力为对美国的技术追赶。欧洲的制度框架亦各具特色，且十分适配通过模仿、适配外来技术以契合本土发展情境实现经济增长的路径。然而技术追赶实则具有自我终结性：当经济体抵达技术前沿，或是在条件趋同场景下制度为追赶进程设置了上限时，追赶便会宣告终止。一旦抵达这一阶段，既有的制度体系可能便不再适配发展需求。针对21个经济合作与发展组织（Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development）成员国的面板数据开展的回归分析显示，就业保护立法（Employment Protection Legislations，EPL）在20世纪60、70年代的快速追赶期，曾对生产率增长产生正向推动作用。但自20世纪80年代起，就业保护立法对劳动生产率增长的整体效应转为负面。