HUI Working Papers,
HUI Research

Abstract: A natural experiment is used to identify the causal relationship between employment protection legislation and firm growth. The natural experiment occurred in Sweden in 2001, when an exemption made it possible for firms with less than eleven employees to exclude two workers from the last-in-first-out principle when dismissing personel. The estimated average treatment effect of the reform show that the number of employees increased with 0.135 percent in firms with 5-9 employees relative to firms with 10-15 employees, which corresponds to over 5,000 additional jobs per year created by the reform. Firms with ten employees, just below the size threshold, became 3.4 percent less likely to increase their workforce to a level surpassing the threshold, indicating that the last-in-first-out rule prevented these firms from growing. Thus, employment protection legislation seems to act as a growth barrier for small firms.

Keywords: firm growth; growth barriers; employment protection

JEL-codes: D22; J23; K31; L25

50 pages, March 5, 2014

Full text files

BinaryLoader.axd?Own....pdf&Attachment=True  

Download statistics

• HUI Research
• Ordering Working Papers
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Hans Seerar Westerberg ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:huiwps:0102This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:15:10.