This paper discusses theoretical aspects and evidences related to designing labor market institutions in emerging market and developing economies. This note reviews the state of theory and evidence on the design of labor market institutions in a developing economy context and then reviews its consistency with actual labor market advice in a selected set of emerging and developing economies. The focus is mainly on three broad sets of institutions that matter for both workers’ protection and labor market efficiency: employment protection, unemployment insurance and social assistance, minimum wages and collective bargaining. Text mining techniques are used to identify IMF recommendations in these areas in Article IV Reports for 30 emerging and frontier economies over 2005–2016. This note has provided a critical review of the literature on the design of labor market institutions in emerging and developing market economies, and benchmarked the advice featured in IMF recommendations for 30 emerging market and frontier economies against the tentative conclusions from the literature.

Discusses the unemployment insurance system in which programmes are operated by each state within the minimum standards established by the federal government.

I use three decades of county-level data to estimate the effects of federal unemployment benefit extensions on economic activity. To overcome the reverse causality coming from the fact that benefit extensions are a function of state unemployment rates, I only use the within-state variation in outcomes to identify treatment effects. Identification rests on a differences-in-differences approach which exploits heterogeneity in county exposure to policy changes. To distinguish demand and supply-side channels, I estimate the model separately for tradable and non-tradable sectors. Finally I use benefit extensions as an instrument to estimate local fiscal multipliers of unemployment benefit transfers. I find (i) that the overall impact of benefit extensions on activity is positive, pointing to strong demand effects; (ii) that, even in tradable sectors, there are no negative supply-side effects from work disincentives; and (iii) a fiscal multiplier estimate of 1.92, similar to estimates in the literature for other types of spending.

The effect of public regulation on the labor market: detailed analyses of a wide range of policy interventions. The six studies collected in this CESifo volume analyze the sometimes unpredictable effects of public regulation on the labor market. Examining a wide range of policy interventions -- from subsidized employment to an increased tax on capital -- and using a variety of methodologies to analyze them, these contributions by leading scholars of the European labor market will advance the policy debate over regulation at a time of serious labor market problems in Europe and elsewhere. The first three chapters of Labor Market Institutions and Public Regulation present empirical findings, comparing the effects of job training and subsidized employment on the Swedish labor market, analyzing the effect of extended unemployment benefits on unemployment duration for older Austrian workers, and examining poor labor market performance in Spain even after policy reforms. The following chapters take a more theoretical approach, applying the analytical tools of theory to policy issues. These three studies examine the general equilibrium repercussions of public support for both basic and higher education, develop an efficiency wage model to analyze mandated severance pay, and compare different kinds of redistribution to low-skill workers financed by an increased tax on capital.