Job Creation in Spain: Productivity Growth, Labour Market Reforms or both?

The benefits implied by changing the growth model are at the heart ofthe heated political and economic debate in Spain. Increases in productivity and the reallocation of employment towards more innovative sectors are defended as the panacea for most of the ills afflicting the Spanish economy. In this paper we use a DSGE model with price rigidities, and labour market search frictions a la Mortensen-issarides, to assess the effects of the change in the growth model onunemployment. In so doing, we assume that the vigorous demand shock which has been mostly responsible for recent economic growth in Spain will be successfully substituted by a productivity shock as the main driver of Spain‘s…