Doing Business and the Rigidity of Employment Index

[alex_tabarrok]

Originally posted on November 30, 2009.

The rigidity of employment index used in our chapter on Unemployment and Labor Force Participation comes fromDoing Business, the World Bank’s massive database on business regulations across 183 economies.  Using field teams the World Bank measures things such as the time and expense it takes to start a new business, the time and trouble to resolve a commercial dispute in the courts, the difficulty of hiring workers and the rigidity of employment.  Data on these characteristics across surveys can be easily downloaded here.

The Doing Business reports are excellent.  Scrolling through these reports it’s easy to find many useful graphs which can be quickly cut and pasted into a presentation.  Here, for example, is a figure on rigidity of employment and the share of women in employment and the youth unemployment rate (from Doing Business 2006).  Right click “View on Image” to open full size.