Labor Laws and Innovation

We provide empirical evidence that strong dismissal laws appear to have a positive effect on the innovative pursuits of firms and their employees. Stringent labor laws provide firms a commitment device to not punish short-run failures and thereby spur their employees to pursue value-enhancing innovative activities. Using patents and citations as proxies for innovation, we identify the effect of dismissal laws by exploiting the time-series variation generated by staggered country-level law changes. Using fixed effect panel regressions and difference-in-difference tests, we find that innovation is fostered by stringent laws governing dismissal of employees. In addition, stringent dismissal laws disproportionately influence innovation in the more innovation-intensive sectors of the economy. Finally, we complement our cross-country results with firm-level tests within the United States that exploit a discontinuity generated by the passage of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act