Drivers of Spain’s Export Performance and the Role of the Labor Market Reforms

Download or read book Drivers of Spain’s Export Performance and the Role of the Labor Market Reforms written by Jorge Salas and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spain’s export performance strengthened after the global financial crisis, and exports now represent more than a third of GDP. This paper argues that several factors contributed to that achievement: external demand, supported by greater diversification of destination markets; enhanced export orientation of Spanish firms, partly as a response to lower domestic demand after the crisis; and competitiveness gains, reflecting in part changes in the labor market following structural reforms adopted in 2010 and 2012. Based on cross-country panel regressions linking real export growth to employment protection indicators, those labor market reforms are estimated to account for nearly one-tenth to above one-quarter of Spain’s total export growth rate from 2010 to 2013.