Piotr Krajewski (p)

The aim of the study is to estimate the regional fiscal multipliers in Poland based on SVAR model. We apply the methodology of Blanchard and Perotti, who used quarterly data and estimated cyclical components of taxes to identify fiscal shocks. However, unlike Blanchard and Perotti, who analyzed the impact of fiscal policy on GDP, we examine the impact of government spending on regional employment. The empirical study is based on Polish quarterly data for the period 2000-2015. Our results show that regional fiscal multipliers are highly heterogeneous. Static fiscal multipliers, defined as the elasticity of regional employment with respect to the national level of government spending, are varying from -0.01 to 0.42. Moreover, our estimations indicate that the impact of government spending on regional labour market is usually transitory. An exception is the Mazowieckie voivodship, where the capital of Poland is located, in which we observe persistent effects of fiscal disturbance. A potential reason for the strongest government spending impact on regional labor market in Mazowieckie voivodship is that the majority of central government institutions is located in Warsaw. As a consequence, the labour market in the capital of Poland is more sensitive to fluctuations of government spending on public sector employment than labour markets in the rest of Poland. Our estimations also show that fiscal multipliers are usually higher in regions in which the share of the agricultural sector is relatively low.

Angel Martin-Roman (p), Alfonso Moral, Javier Martin-Roman (p)

Most of the labour legislation is national, and sub-national entities like autonomous communities (Spanish regions), provinces or municipalities do not have great capacity to elaborate regulations on these issues. However, this does not mean that the existing labour law is enforced in the same way in each territory. In fact, the compliance of the law could vary in each specific area if there were significant differences in the enforcement. This, in turn, could lead to differences in local labour markets.

In the Spanish case, the agency that ensures compliance with labour regulations at the national level is the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate through its staff. However, the distribution of inspectors among the different territories, when it is computed taking into account the number of employed persons, presents important discrepancies. An analysis, both cross-sectional and time series, of the data concerning the number of inspectors per 100,000 employees in each province shows variability over 100%, in the spatial as well as the temporal dimensions. These important differences in the number of workers that each labour inspector has to monitor in the different territories may have an influence on the labour law enforcement in the space.

From an empirical point of view, the work is carried out in three stages. Firstly, an exploratory analysis of the data on provincial endowments of labour inspectors is performed. Secondly, a study of the degree of interterritorial convergence is carried out using standard procedures such as β-convergence or σ-convergence. Finally, we study the presence of possible spatial patterns in the distribution of labour inspectors, and their evolution over time, using different spatial-dependence matrices.

Sylwia Roszkowska (p)

The aim of the study is a statistical analysis of the impact of labour market institutions (minimum wages, tax wedges, union density and EPL) on employment and unemployment in the OECD countries. Particularly, we are interested if the aforementioned institutions affect different groups (by sex, age and education level). To analyze the relationship between the institutions and the labour market outcomes the equations explaining the employment (and unemployment) rates were estimated. Additionally, other key macroeconomic variables including labour productivity, GDP growth rate, competitiveness measure, human capital level were taken into account. The parameters of mentioned equations were estimated using panel GLS assuming heteroscedastic and autocorrelated error term. The whole sample of the OECD countries were divided into more homogenous subgroups using level of institutions and geographical criteria. Due to data availability our sample covers period 1991-2014.
The main conclusions of the analysis are as follow. The impact of minimum wages on the overall employment rate is statistically significant. The impact of minimum wages on the youth employment rate was not confirmed. The hypothesis that the minimum wage harms those with the lowest levels of education was not rejected. The tax wedge affect all analyzed employment and unemployment rates, but the impact of tax progressivity is not obvious. We cannot reject the hypothesis about the impact of employment protection legislation on the employment rates – the impact is the strongest in the group of the youngest and low educated.

Nuria Benítez Llamazares (p), Ricardo Pagán Rodríguez

Overweight and obesity are defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an “abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health”. The high growth of obese and overweight people in the last few decades (particularly in developed countries), has raised concerns among researchers and national health systems, and the analysis of its causes and consequences for human health has become a priority. Similarly, in socioeconomic investigation we find that obesity and overweight are considered as key factors for living conditions from a social and economic perspective. The aim of this study is to determine if body mass index (BMI), often used as an indicator for nutritional status – especially for obesity and overweight –, has an impact on the probability of participating in the Spanish labor market. We use data taken from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) in Spain and carry out both a descriptive and an econometric analysis using probit and tobit models for limited dependent variables (LDV). Our results indicate that BMI affects the occupational status of working-age males and females living in Spain. In fact, an increase in BMI has a positive impact on the probability of entering the Spanish labor market until a certain level above which, additional increases in BMI imply lower probability of labor participation.