This paper explores the empirical relevance of public debt accumulation for labor market institutions and outcomes. In theory, since debt service obligations act as a constraint on policy choices, past debt accumulation and current interest rates should influence reform incentives and labor...

"Race-to-the-bottom" deregulation is to be expected when markets operate across the borders of countries that independently choose and enforce labor policies. Less obviously, in pre-crisis EMU reforms of labor market policies were uneven and related to international imbalances. That pattern is...

We analyze the implications of labor market reforms for an open economy’s human capital investment and future production. A stylized model shows that labor market deregulation can imply more positive current account balances if financial markets are imperfect and labor market institutions not...

This paper proposes a model of endogenous growth with diversifiable uncertainty, irreversible investment decisions and imperfect labour mobility. Obstacles to labour reallocation lower the operating profits earned by existing firms and increase the cost of creating new ones, thus reducing...

We discuss how a schooling system’s structure may imply that private school enrolment leads to worse subsequent performance in further education or in the labour market, and we seek evidence of such phenomena in Italian data. If students differ not only in terms of their families’ ability to...