Long-run homogeneity of labour demand. Panel evidence from OECD countries

Abstract

This study makes an attempt to examine the long-run relationship between the key labour market parameters of employment, aggregate output, real product wages and labour-augmenting technical progress for a sample of 21 OECD countries covering the period from 1970 to 2000. A new panel error correction technique is applied, which allows one to constrain the long-run coefficients to be identical across the countries while letting the short-run coefficients which govern the dynamics and the error variances differ freely, respectively. Thus, this estimation approach assumes that institutional and cultural differences, albeit causing short-term deviations of labour demand behaviour across countries, leave the long-run structure of the labour markets unaffected. That is to say, the long-run equilibrium relationship between the key labour market variables is taken to be similar across the OECD economies. The empirical analysis shows that the long-run relationship between the key labour market parameters is equal across the OECD countries. However, adjustment speed of actual employment to the equilibrium is much higher in countries with flexible labour markets, such as the USA and UK, than in countries with rigid labour markets, such as Germany and Austria.

Acknowledgement

The author is very grateful to Christa Magerl for excellent research assistance on this and related projects.