This paper presents the first joint evaluation of the two major labour market reforms implemented in Spain to foster permanent employment in 1994 and 1997. The 1994 reform restored the principle of causality in the application of temporary contracts and the 1997 reform introduced a new permanent...

This paper analyzes the strikingly different response of unemployment to the Great Recession in France and Spain. Their labor market institutions are similar and their unemployment rates just before the crisis were both around 8%. Yet, in France, unemployment rate has increased by 2 percentage...

Poland's current challenge is to somplete its transition to a fully developed market economy, while advancing towards integration into the European Union. This paper is devoted to analyzing the Polish labor market's main institutions, circa 1995, in the areas of labor reallocation, wage setting,...

Theory provides many explanations about the influence of electoral rules on politicians’ equilibrium behavior. With a few exceptions, all models agree that majoritarian elections are associated with more targeted redistribution and lower politicians’ rents than proportional representation....

Unit roots in output, an exponential 2% rate of convergence and no change in the underlying dynamics of output seem to be three stylized facts that can not go together. This paper extends the Solow-Swan growth model allowing for cross-sectional heterogeneity. In this framework, aggregate shocks...