Tracking Structural Reforms

Programme

9.00-9.40:

Crises, What Crises? On The Relative Roles of Political and Economic Crises in Diving Structural Reforms
* Jeffrey B. Nugent (University of Southern California)
Nauro F. Campos (Brunel University, CEPR, IZA and WDI)
Cheng Hsiao (University of Southern California)

9.40-10.20:

Growth and Policy Complementarities: Are Complementary Reforms a “luxury” for developing countries?
Jorge Braga de Macedo (FE-UNL and NBER)
* Joaquim Oliveira-Martins (OECD)
Bruno Rocha (IERU-University of Coimbra)

10.20-11.00:

Tax Wedge and the effect on Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Novel Dataset
* Giovanna Labartino (Università Bocconi)

11.00-11.30: Coffee break

11.30-12.10:

The Doing Business Indicators: measurement issues and political implications
Janine Berg (ILO)
* Sandrine Cazes (ILO)

12.10-12.50:

The new FRDB – IZA database on labor market reforms: objectives, challenges and potentials
* Werner Eichhorst (IZA)
* Paola Monti (Fondazione R. Debenedetti)

12.50-14.00: Lunch

14.00-15.00:

Discussion on further developments for the IZA-fRDB database on labour market reforms (open to all participants)

* Indicates the presenter

Project Outline

“Labor market institutions and labor market reforms database”

IZA and Fondazione Ing. Rodolfo Debenedetti

Objectives

In recent years, there has been considerable progress in the development of international comparative databases on labor market reforms and on quantitative indicators providing institutional information for many countries. Core elements of labor market institutions that influence actors’ behavior and overall labor market flexibility have increasingly been the object of attempts at the development of aggregate, quantitative institutional indicators as well as descriptive inventories of labor market reforms. Yet, considerable scope for improvement remains. On one hand, comparative labor market research would benefit from a generally available and comprehensive set of institutional indicators that cover the most important areas of the labor market and institutional change over time. On the other hand, researchers are increasingly interested on qualitative information on labor market reforms allowing for a deeper understanding of country specific reform processes.

First steps

IZA and fRDB (Fondazione Ing. Rodolfo Debenedetti) are currently cooperating in constructing a comprehensive database (i.e complete both in time and geographically) on policy reforms in core areas of the EU labour market and the welfare state. The database covers reforms of active labour market policies, non-employment benefits, employment protection legislation and pensions. The already existing “fRDB Social Reforms Database” is the starting point of this work, but IZA and fRDB are currently cooperating in order to construct a more comprehensive source of information.

Ideally, this database will work as a complement of information for researchers interested not only in quantitative features of reforms, but also in qualitative information. The database will present reforms in a synthetic and ready-to-use manner, including details on the main institutional changes over time and target groups. This can best be achieved through the establishment of a flexible network of experts. The network currently involved into the project consists of three groups:

1. a core group at IZA and fRDB coordinating these activities and assembling collected information and data;
2. an Advisory Board supervising the project and discussing further developments;
3. individual experts on specific topics. Country experts will cross-check national information and their scoring as well as compare and assess existing datasets and indicators.

To facilitate this, IZA and FRDB have recently established a web-based platform with an intranet feature for the network in order to stimulate interaction on existing indicators and inventories and the collection of new data.

A workshop in March 2009: “Tracking Structural Reforms”

The workshop “Tracking Structural Reforms”, organized by IZA and fRDB at Bocconi University (13 March 2009), will be an opportunity to present our work. Further developments of the database will be defined after discussion between fRDB, IZA and the Advisory Board of the project.