1887

OECD Economics Department Working Papers

Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.

The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.

English, French

Occupational entry regulations and their effects on productivity in services: Firm-level evidence

This paper assesses the possible dynamic effects of occupational entry regulations (OER) on productivity. It combines firm-level productivity data with a new cross-country policy indicator measuring the stringency of OER by the presence of administrative burdens, qualifications requirements, and mobility restrictions, for five professional and ten personal services. The evidence suggests that bold reforms easing OER, especially those concerning qualification requirements, could help increase the contribution of personal and professional services to aggregate productivity growth via two channels: the acceleration of their catch up to best global practices (within-firm channel), where firms in regulated sectors could gain up to 2.5 percentage points of productivity on average; and a higher contribution of labour reallocation to firms’ employment growth (between-firm channel), which could increase by up to 10 percent for the most productive firms.

English

Keywords: productivity, catch-up, occupational licensing, regulations, reallocation
JEL: J44: Labor and Demographic Economics / Particular Labor Markets / Professional Labor Markets; Occupational Licensing; C21: Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / Single Equation Models; Single Variables / Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; L5: Industrial Organization / Regulation and Industrial Policy; O57: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth / Economywide Country Studies / Comparative Studies of Countries; L16: Industrial Organization / Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance / Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics: Industrial Structure and Structural Change; Industrial Price Indices; O43: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth / Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity / Institutions and Growth
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