کارآفرینی و موسسات بازار کار

The paper introduces a model of enterprise formation in a unionized economy with labor protection and wage bargaining. Enterprise formation is subject to market risk and is shaped by the unemployment compensation and redundancy pay to labor in the post-entry stage with firing. Private contracts cannot undo the policy-determined labor market regulation as the insurance elements created by those regulations raise the union bargaining power. This reduces entrepreneurship ex ante. The predictions of the model are tested in cross-section OECD data on 19 economies over 1978–1998. Empirical support is found for the view that enterprise formation is affected by economic risks, unemployment compensation, union power, and labor protection variables.

Understanding the determinants of entrepreneurship and enterprise formation is the key to understanding and predicting the future performance of different economies. Empirical data indicates that the rate of entrepreneurship differs substantially across OECD countries (Fig. 1). Unfortunately, only a few tentative explanations are available to explain such a finding. Fölster and Trofimov (1997) explain the cross-country differences in entrepreneurship in terms of a political economy equilibrium. A related study by Fehn and Meier (2001) also suggests that the economic performance is linked to the institutional setups on labor and capital markets, intertwined by politoeconomic forces. They derive and test cross-country relationship between different measures of labor market rigidities and of competition in capital markets. Ilmakunnas and Kanniainen (2001) find statistical evidence that national macroeconomic risks, social risk insurance, the size of the public sector and differing labor market structures shape enterprise creation across countries. Kanniainen and Leppämäki (2000) suggest that labor market institutions, particularly the nature of wage bargaining interact with the entry threshold. Apart from these studies, very little is known of the impact of labor market institutions on enterprise formation. The focus has been rather different, i.e. in the impact of labor market institutions on employment, not on the market entry of firms which create the jobs.

There are a number of insightful results reported by our study, which suggests that economic risks shape the allocation of human capital between entrepreneurs and labor supply. In the light of our findings, the Knightian view of entrepreneurs as risk-takers re-emerges as an empirically valid paradigm. By implication, a desire for stabilization is the most important policy implication. Among its many dimensions, the main focus of the current paper has been the interaction between private enterprise formation, entrepreneurship and the labor markets. We introduced a rather stylized model which, however, is rich enough to organize the discussion and for the theoretical foundation for aggregate econometric analysis. Such an analysis was carried out on the basis of cross-country data on a set of OECD countries. Several complementary tests were introduced. The results confirm the proposition that labor market institutions are not neutral with regard to enterprise formation. By implication, another specific link has thus been identified between labor markets and employment growth.