Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP11098
Authors: Ravi Kanbur; Lucas Ronconi
Abstract: This paper provides, to our knowledge for the first time, cross-country measures of enforcement of labor law across almost every country in the world. The distinction between de jure and de facto regulation is well understood in theory, but almost never implemented in cross-country empirical work because of lack of data. As a result, influential papers like the one by Botero et. al. (2004) published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which have shaped the policy debate by finding strong negative consequences of labor regulation on labor market outcomes, are based entirely on measures of de jure stringency of regulations. We show that this neglect of regulation enforcement matters. There is, on average, a negative correlation between the stringency of labor regulation and the intensity of its enforcement. The strong results of Botero et. al. (2004) on the consequences of labor regulation, and the hypotheses of La Porta et. al (2008) on the legal origin theory of regulation stringency, no longer hold for effective labor regulation.
Keywords: effective regulation; enforcement; labor market outcomes; labor regulation; legal origin theory
JEL Codes: J88; K42
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| stringency of labor regulation (de jure) (J89) | intensity of its enforcement (de facto) (F55) |
| intensity of its enforcement (de facto) (F55) | labor market outcomes (J48) |
| stringency of labor regulation (de jure) (J89) | labor market outcomes (J48) |
| effective labor regulation (J88) | negative consequences previously ascribed to labor regulation (J48) |
| legal traditions (K15) | variations in effective labor regulation (J89) |