Job quality and institutional investors: Evidence in 17 OECD countries, 1993-2017

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between the share of assets held by different institutional investors as a proportion of GDP and a synthetic index of job quality in 17 OECD countries from 1993 to 2017. Our first contribution is to provide a new, multidimensional composite indicator of job quality based only on objective dimensions. According to this measure, a continuous decline in job quality is observed in many OECD countries. Second, the emergence of institutional investors as central financial actors since the 1980s has significantly affected labour relations. In this regard, we argue that the increasing influence of institutional investors through their effects on wages and jobs is associated with a lower level of job quality. Using fixed-effects OLS and IV regressions, we find little support that the share of asset holdings by institutional investors is correlated with a lower level of job quality, mainly due to the small magnitude of the coefficient estimates. Finally, we find that the job quality-reducing effect of the share of assets held by institutional investors is more pronounced in countries that have experienced a decline in union bargaining power, again with a small magnitude of our different estimates.