This paper provides a new perspective in classifying ALMPs depending on their main objective, also in light of their relevance and cost-effectiveness during normal times, during a crisis, and during recovery. We distinguish ALMPs that provide incentives for retaining employment, incentives for...

This paper analyses how and to which degree the Danish flexicurity concept and its various elements achieve the renowned Danish miracle by evaluating their unemployment and inequality effects and their complementarities. We develop a microfounded model of searching workers and firms, calibrate...

Workfare has had a chequered history because it has not been well thought out. It increases employment not just because it calls the bluff of the workshy; this element need not be all that harsh. It works because it acts as a marginal employment subsidy of a type not tried before (except...

First moves towards a real understanding of the offshoring phenomenon date back to very recent times, with employment and productivity effects occupying much of the literature around the subject. In particular for Japan, the studies conducted so far focus on the disaggregate level and put the...

While growth in output and employment remains relatively strong in the Irish economy, there has been considerable focus recently on some high-profile job losses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. This paper places these developments within a broader context and shows that aggregate...

Do firms reduce employment when their insiders (established, incumbent employees) claim higher wages? The conventional answer in the theoretical literature is that insider power has no influence on employment, provided that the newly hired employees (entrants) receive their reservation wages....

This paper evaluates the implications for employment, productivity and wages of allowing for more flexibility in weekly hours worked introduced in the recent Spanish labour market reform (the 2012 reform). A crucial aspect of the model will be the extent to which firms will be able to choose the...

For effective economic growth, intentional “creation” of unemployment is required to be followed up by its «elimination». From Okun’s law one can infer an interesting corollary: growing unemployment without reducing GDP increases the economy’s potential. This corollary can be proved...

Those advocating “government as employer of last resort schemes” (ELR) nearly always assume, first, that “ELR employers” should be specially set up to employ those out of work, i.e. that these projects or “employers” should be separate from existing public sector employers. A second...

This paper sheds new light on the causes of the unemployment upsurge in Japan during the “fading 1990s”, an unprecedented period of structural crisis. We estimate a labor market model and identify the main macroeconomic determinants of labor demand and labor supply decisions in last decades....