VI. ALTERNATIVE SPECIFICATION FOR THE DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES The present section explores a different baseline specification for the regressions. It allows for a richer set of demographic controls and eliminates the constructed employment protection variable that was used in the previous regressions to capture the institutional attributes of the labor market. While the earlier regressions only took into account the demographics in a very limited way by integrating only one variable capturing the relative size of the group of the population that we studied with respect to the total size of the population, the present specifications allow for a much richer set of demographic indicators. The basic motivation for this change is the perception that the pure size effect of the working age population—or expressed differently the potential labor force—in the country is inadequately taken into account in the preceding internationally comparable regression analysis. The same observation holds true for the composition of the population by age group. Therefore, we now enrich the set of control variables to include an indicator for the size of the population, as well as variables capturing the relative weight of the young and to old groups in the total population. This way, the specification better allows for the possibility that the relative size of the young and the old populations play an important role in determining the effect of changes in incentives and in policy on the observed outcomes in the labor market. For example, a strong measured inducement to retire for the elderly, will ceterus paribus have a much stronger effect on the ER and UR of the younger cohorts if the elderly are relatively more numerous in the population.
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