The European Employment Strategy has set the goal of raising the retirement age of workers in the EU through a strategy of "active ageing". Yet despite some progress over the last decade, empirical data show persistent diversity across EU member states. Institutional arrangements of social and...

This contribution draws some conclusions from the experience of attempts by the German government at integrating the most vulnerable groups into the labor market, in particular the long-term unemployed and the low skilled. There has been a sort of paradigm shift that goes beyond active labor...

Employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits and active labor market policy are Janus-faced institutions. On the one hand they are devices of insurance against labor market risk that provide income and employment security. On the other hand they influence the capacities of labor...

Despite a sequence of labor market reforms in recent years, employment of older workers in Germany is still lower than in many other European countries. The paper explains this by institutional factors that affect labor supply, labor demand and matching, i.e. labor market regulation, human...

Policy advice can help political actors design and implement institutional reforms through the generation of political and substantial legitimacy. This article clarifies the institutional pre-conditions of effective supply and transfer of policy advice with particular respect to the field of...

The paper reviews national and international experiences with different combinations of in-work benefits, subsidized employment, statutory minimum wages and implicit minimum wages defined by social assistance provisions. It calls for a cautious approach regarding the introduction of additional...