COUNTRY CLASSIFICATION BASED ON LABOUR MARKETRELATED CHARACTERISTICS

This paper attempts to do a classification of countries based on the labourrelated values prevalent in their societies. Using data from the World Values Survey, wave 4, an attempt is made to create country clusters based on four classes of values relevant to labour market behaviour: 1) values important to the society as a whole, 2) societal perceptions, attitudes and behaviours 3) attitudes toward work, and 4) economic and political environment. After using principal component analysis to reduce dimensionality of the data on the last three dimensions, cluster analysis was done on a mix of variables and factors. Our findings are partially consistent to the existing classifications of countries. Some results appear to challenge some of the existing classifications, as we found some less expected associations that appear to be correct, given the fact that they occur for several classes of values.