本研究的實證結果顯示，整體而言，就業市場僵固性與國家實質GDP有負向關係。然而在不同所得類型之間的結果則有所差異，其中「中所得以上」國家的雇用困難度與實質產出存在凹函數（concave function）關係，隱含雇用困難度在中所得以上國家不可過於僵化，也應避免太過寬鬆的就業保護環境，適當地規範雇主的人事雇用能力將有助於國家產出水準發展；「中所得以下」國家的勞動管制大致上會負向影響國家的實質產出成長，不過遣散成本相關的勞動法令嚴格程度與國家實質產出成長則存在正向關係。基於上述結果，本研究建議各國政策制定者在擬定勞動市場保護管制走向時應配合其國家所處所得階段，方能找到適合的勞動政策。 ;Under the increasingly international competitive pressures generated by the globalization, there seems to be more and more countries want to use the labor market deregulation way to decrease unemployment rate and enhance country’s international competitiveness. This paper is aimed at investigating whether “rigid” labor market, which generated by labor market protection law, will affect country’s real GDP growth. Therefore, we use the rigidity of employment index (which is composed of difficulty of hiring, rigidity of hours, and difficulty of firing) and firing cost index, which developed by Doing Business Report, as proxy variables to measure the degree of labor regulation and perform the fixed effect regression method for a sample of 82 economies during the period of 2004-2008. To test whether labor market regulation affects real GDP growth differently according to the economic development level of economies, we also divide the sample economies into two groups. Following the World Bank criterion for income level, samples are classified as either higher- or lower-income economies. The empirical results show that “rigidity of employment” has a negative effect on real GDP growth in all economies. However, there are different estimates among two income groups. For higher-income economies, there is a concave function relationship between “difficulty of hiring” and real GDP growth. This result reveals that the rule of hiring should not be too stringent or less, and that properly regulate employer’s hiring ability would be beneficial to national real GDP growth; For low-income economies, most of indicators of labor market regulations have negative effect on national’s real GDP growth except for the “firing cost index”. In regard to above mentioned empirical results, we recommend that policy makers should take their economic development stage into account when they are trying to find their suitable labor regulation policies.
