Since the middle of the 1980s many European countries have reduced the strictness of their employment protection mainly by relaxing it for temporary jobs. These countries are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The article explores the...

Reforms of employment protection (EPL) in Europe eased the recourse to temporary forms of employment while not reducing the strictness of EPL of permanent jobs (with the exception of Spain). Since 1990, such two-tier reforms have been implemented in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the...

"Pasar por un período de desempleo o inactividad forzosa puede ser una experiencia traumática para cualquier trabajador. Sin embargo, las consecuencias negativas del episodio de desempleo o inactividad pueda que no acaben con la obtención de un nuevo empleo. Este estudio encuentra que el...

The Great Recession brought large increases in unemployment and college enrollment; we explore how changing labor market conditions affected the decision to enroll, focusing on the role of state-specific dimensions of Unemployment Insurance (UI) policy. We measure the enrollment response to...

Does the supply of a welfare state create its own demand? Many economic scholars studying welfare arrangements refer to Say’s law and insinuate a self-destructive welfare state. However, little is known about the empirical validity of these assumptions and hypotheses. We study the dynamic...

"El presente documento utiliza información de panel de las Encuestas Nacionales de Hogares del Perú entre 1998 y 2005 para estimar cuantitativamente que la pérdida del empleo de un miembro del hogar provoca en promedio los siguientes impactos negativos de corto plazo: a) reduce el ingreso...

This paper presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labor market policies. Our sample consists of 199 program estimates drawn from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007. In about one-half of these cases we have both a short-term impact estimate (for a...

I review theories and evidence on labor market policies and institutions in an international context. These include collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection laws, unemployment insurance (UI), mandated parental leave, and active labor market policies. Scandinavia and Central...

In the Great Recession most OECD countries used short-time work (publicly subsidized working time reductions) to counteract a steep increase in unemployment. We show that short-time work can actually save jobs. However, there is an important distinction to be made: While the rule-based component...

This paper explores the effects of high skilled immigration to a host country with unionized low skilled labor and an unemployment insurance scheme. We show that such immigration can create a negative immigration surplus due to adverse effects on low skilled employment, provided that fiscal...