Table 7 Data: definitions and sources (Continued)
Product market regulation | OECD | Index that measures the degree to which policies promote or inhibit competition in areas of the product market where competition is viable. |
Employment protection legislation | OECD | Indicator of the procedures and costs involved in dismissing individuals and groups of workers. We use version 2 of the indicator (1998–2013) for the cross-section regressions and version 1 (1985–2013) for the long-run regressions. |
Trade union density | OECD and Visser (2013) | Ratio of wage and salary earners that are trade union members, divided by the total number of wage and salary earners. |
Coverage of collective bargaining | Employees covered by collective (wage) bargaining agreements as a proportion of all wage and salary earners in employment with the right to bargaining, adjusted for the possibility that some sectors or occupations are excluded from the right to bargain. | |
Bargaining | Table 2 of European Commission (2014) | The predominant regime of wage setting in the government sector is collective bargaining as opposed to unilateral decision. |
Centralization | Table 2 of European Commission (2014) | There is de jure centralization of wage updates across the government sector as opposed to decentralization. |
Log per capita GDP | Eurostat | Gross domestic product, chain linked volumes (2010), euro per capita. |
Deficit | IMF and ECB | General government deficit (excluding the government assistance to the financial sector). |
Debt | IMF | General government gross debt. |
Real GDP growth | Eurostat | Percentage change of gross domestic product, chain linked volumes (2010). |
Cyclically adjusted primary balance (CAPB) | European Commission and ECB | Cyclically adjusted primary balance excluding government assistance to the financial sector. |
% of public employees (long-run regressions) | OECD | Number of employees in the general government sector over total number of employees |
% of public administration employees (long-run regressions) | Eurostat | Number of employees in Public Administration over total number employees in Public Administration, Education, and Health. |
Quality of government | International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) and Teorell et al. (2015) | The mean value of the ICRG variables “Corruption,” “Law and Order,” and “Bureaucracy Quality,” where higher values indicate higher quality of government. Corruption is an assessment of corruption in the political system. Law and Order assesses the strength and impartiality of the legal system as well as the popular observance of the law. Bureaucratic Quality measures the institutional strength and quality of the bureaucracy. |
Unemployment rate | Eurostat | Unemployment rate, annual average. |