Product Market Reforms and Employment in OECD Countries

We estimate the employment effects of product market reforms aimed at increasing competitive pressures and easing government controls in a sample of OECD countries over the past two decades. We control for several labour market policies and institutions that are thought to influence equilibrium employment rates,and check whether there are interactions between these policies and product market reforms. We find cross-country evidence that some labour and product market policies may be complementary and adjust for this in regressions. Consistent with the implications of the imperfect competition/bargaining model of Blanchard and Giavazzi (2003), our estimates suggest that restrictive regulations have curbed employment rates significantly in countries where no product market reforms were implemented. These effects appear to have been magnified by the interaction of such regulations with labour market settings that provide a strong bargaining power to insiders, suggesting that rent sharing tends to depress employment. The implication is that significant employment gains can be obtained by deregulating product markets in overlyregulated countries. Moreover, these employment gains are likely to be higher in countries that have rigid labour markets.