An opinion poll on a representative sample of Italian citizens suggests that it does. We focus on reforms that would lengthen retirement age and/or cut pension benefits. After controlling for individual features of the respondent, we find that individuals who are more informed about the costs...

The increasing literature on the interactions between liberalization-integration of product markets and labour market reforms is often highly speculative and draws on a rather weak empirical basis. Cross-country indicators of regulatory frameworks are often lacking, making it difficult to...

Firing frictions and renegotiation costs affect worker and firm preferences for rigid wages versus individualized Nash bargaining in a standard model of equilibrium unemployment, in which workers vary by observable skill. Rigid wages permit savings on renegotiation costs and prevent workers from...

This paper investigates the border between formal employment, shadow employment, and unemployment in an equilibrium model of the labour market with market frictions. From the labour demand side, firms optimally create legal or shadow employment through a mechanism that is akin to tax evasion....

A common explanation of low unemployment rates in the Czech Republic (CR) is the stance of active labour market policies (ALMPs), in particular the extensive use of ALMP instruments and an effective delivery system. Using a large panel of quarterly data from employment office districts, we...

Contrary to the popular wisdom, ‘sclerotic’ European labour markets are characterized by relatively large job turnover rates. A model is developed which – unlike standard theories of job matching with on-the-job search – can account for the coexistence of strict employment security...

We document the presence of a trade-off between unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the provision of insurance against labour market risk. Different countries’ locations along this trade-off represent stable, hard to modify, politico-economic equilibria....

We document the presence of a trade-off between unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the provision of insurance against labour market risk. The mix of quantity restrictions and price regulations adopted by the various countries would seem to correspond to a...

Many social policy reforms have been carried out in Europe in the last fifteen years. Most of these reforms are marginal. Often they are mutually inconsistent. Yet, something is changing in the European social policy landscape and not in the direction implied by the presence of a 'race to the...

The adjustment of labour markets during transition has been quite different from that anticipated by the Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) literature. In particular, it has involved stagnant unemployment pools, large flows to inactivity and strikingly low workers' mobility especially when...