Research coauthored by BC economist Prof. Fabio Schiantarelli and Ph.D. alumnus Giuseppe Fiori,
published in the February 2012 issue of the prestigious Economic Journal, has
demonstrated that 'Policies to promote competition in Europe's markets for good and services could raise the potential for job creation at little or no cost for the public purse.'
Their findings, based on 20 developed countries in the OECD over more than 20 years,
highlight the importance of stimulating competition and making it easier for new firms to enter markets
in order to promote better employment outcomes. Over time, product market reforms lead to
labor market reforms that enhance the positive effect on employment: what the research team calls a 'double dividend'.
Their analysis shows, for example, that in heavily regulated countries, product market reforms
could raise the overall employment rate--the percentage of people in the working-age population who are employed--by as much as 5.4 percentage points.
This finding is of particular importance at present as many countries in Europe and elsewhere emerge from the Great Recession with a hangover of high unemployment and an urgent need to rein in large public deficits and growing public debt.
A longer discussion of their article's findings is available from the Royal Economic
Society's website.
Fiori, a 2010 BC Economics PhD, will join the North Carolina State University faculty next fall.
Other authors of the study include Giuseppe Nicoletti and Stefano Scarpetta, both economists at the OECD. Schiantarelli, a member of the BC
economics faculty since 1992, has published extensively on topics relating to product market reform
and financial liberalization.