This survey highlights the key results of the empirical literature concerning the costs of flexibility enhancing reforms in product and labour markets. The documented costs include reduced employment, loss of government revenue, undesirable distributional consequences and political instability....

Debate over labor market flexibility focuses mainly on firing costs, while largely ignoring wage determination and the need for collective bargaining reform. Most countries affected by the euro debt crisis have two-tier bargaining structures in which plant-level bargaining supplements national...