Revealing variation in employment institutions a cluster analysis of OECD and EU countries

Economic research has widely analysed the effects of institutions and policies on the economy and labour markets. However, while a lot of comparative work has been done on welfare states, there is much less theoretical work about employment institutions across countries. Better insight into in these patterns of employment institutions is needed because differences between countries in that respect are possibly related to differences in the valuation of work. In order to investigate the relationship, first, the institutions concerning employment including labour relations need to be systematically examined. This paper asks the following questions: What sorts of patterns do we see for OECD and EU countries when looking at different aspects of employment institutions, which clusters of countries can be distinguished, and how do they differ? We present the results of an institutional analysis as part of a larger project on the relationship about societal appreciation of the value of work, including different types of employment, and employment institutions. To this end, we use institutional indicators in the areas of the individual employment relationship, the collective employment relationship, employment conditions, labour market transitions, and the relationship between work and care, making use of data from several comparative databases. The results show the breadth of patterns of employment institutions in developed countries in OECD and EU countries grouped together in five distinctive clusters.