PROTECTION AGAINST UNLAWFUL DISMISSAL IN SELECTED EUROPEAN COUNTRIES - INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON FROM THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL STANDPOINT

The advocates of the ''Eurosclerosis''-thesis called for comprehensive reforms of the contractual labour relations in Europe. A prominent example referred to the deregulation of the general dismissal protection by the labor law. The labour-economic analysis of employment and efficiency effects leads to theoretical approaches with ambiguous consequences, persistent long term unemployment in European countries versus productive human resource policy environment of internal labour market strategies. The following empirical parts try to review the dismissal regulation in several european countries and to judge the possible effects of some deregulation measures in relation to the ''employment at will''-tradition of US labour markets. The employment effects of the several deregulations effects in Europe are seemingly very small, the transaction costs of further reforms would be higher than in USA.