Labour Market Performance and Start-Up Costs: OECD Evidence

This paper is intended to make a contribution to the empirical literature explaining the rise ofunemployment since the 1970s in western economies by means of interactions betweenshocks and institutions. The contribution is twofold. First, the impact of a general feature ofdeveloped economies that has been surprisingly neglected in the literature is analyzed,namely, the employment shift from industry and agriculture to services. The secondcontribution of the paper is the focus on the interaction of that shock with the administrativeburdens on firm creation. The working hypothesis is that countries that impose high costs onthe creation of new companies are not able to create enough jobs in the service sector tosuccessfully absorb the workers released from the agriculture and industry sector. The resultis higher unemployment.