Date: 2019
Type: Thesis
How labour market institutions in European welfare capitalisms affect labour market transitions
Florence : European University Institute, 2019, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis
ZAVAKOU, Alkistis, How labour market institutions in European welfare capitalisms affect labour market transitions, Florence : European University Institute, 2019, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/61309
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
Despite the large body of literature on labour market institutions and their effects on employment and unemployment, large gaps remain. This thesis sheds a new light to the old problem of labour market institutional design and labour market performance. It examines how labour market institutions in different European models of capitalism affect labour market transitions. It does so by employing an advanced econometric method: an event history analysis, estimating a piecewise constant exponential model. Longitudinal data are employed from three different national datasets (the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Italian Survey “Famiglia e soggetti sociali”) for the period 1990–2009. The effects of labour market institutions are estimated both at a country-level and at a comparative, pooled-country-level to increase the degrees of freedom and the variability in the independent variables. The empirical evidence suggests that institutions indeed have a significant effect on labour market transitions and this effect differs largely among different models of capitalisms, corroborating the Varieties of Capitalism approach. In accordance with the latter, the importance of non-pecuniary institutions such as trade union power, trade union fragmentation and wage bargaining is re-affirmed and substantial labour market institutional complementarities are found. This thesis advocates for an optimal, strictly positive and intermediate level of EPL in all countries; an unemployment insurance contingent on strict conditionality and high activation; while the optimal level and system of wage bargaining are found to depend crucially on the trade union power as well as trade union coordination and fragmentation. Trade union fragmentation is found to reduce all labour market transitions and have a negative effect on labour market performance.
Additional information:
Defence date: 22 February 2019; Examining Board:
Prof. Hans-Peter Blossfeld, European University Institute (Supervisor);
Prof. François Rycx, ULB (Co-Supervisor);
Prof. Anton Hemerick, European University Institute;
Prof. Manos Matsaganis, Politecnico di Milano
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/61309
Full-text via DOI: 10.2870/85234
Series/Number: EUI; SPS; PhD Thesis
Publisher: European University Institute
LC Subject Heading: Labor market -- European Union countries; Labor policy -- European Union countries.