WHAT DETERMINES THE REFORMS OF EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION LEGISLATION? A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

The aim of this research was to identify the determinants of the employment protection legislation reforms in the global perspective. The study was based on the Labor Freedom index published by the Heritage Foundation, which allowed to include 179 countries in the research that were observed in the period 2003–2013. The conducted study has indicated that changes in GDP and the level of employment in industry may induce the introduction of labor reforms. The changes in the labor law also occurred to be correlated with the number of the nearly excluded from the labor market (the long-term unemployed and youth not in education, employment or training) and also with changes in the government expenditure. However, all these factors may lead to substantially various reform programs in particular countries due to the heterogeneous political pressure of the labor market interest groups and different governmental determination in introduction of the reforms.