Wide-ranging structural reforms are underway in Italy, aimed at addressing key bottlenecks in the product and labor markets. Our analysis, based on the IMF‘s Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF), attempts to quantify the potential gains to the economy from a comprehensive...

The human cost of the recent global crisis is reflected in its impact on the labor market. Explaining why economies with similar downturns had very different employment trends can help design policies to reduce such costs and improve labor markets. This paper analyzes the recent employment...

The aim of this paper is to provide new estimates of employment-output elasticities and assess the effect of structural and macroeocnomic policies on the employment-intensity of growth. Using an unbalanced panel of 167 countries over the period 1991 - 2009, the results suggest that structural...

Even though institutions are created to protect workers, they may interfere with labor market functioning, raise unemployment, and end up being circumvented by informal contracts. This paper uses Brazilian microeconomic data to show that the institutional changes introduced by the 1988...

Labor productivity levels in Bulgaria lag well behind that in the EU, weighing on the convergence process. Stronger productivity growth would allow Bulgaria to close the income gap with the EU average more quickly and to alleviate the structural problems in its labor market, reflected in its...

The aim of this paper is to analyze unemployment and labor market developments in Algeria and assess the factors that may hamper employment creation. The results of the paper suggest that the relative low output-employment elasticities and rigid labor market are the main factors behind the still...

Despite its low unemployment rate, the recent shift in the Japanese Beveridge curve indicates increased labor mismatch. This paper quantifies the age, employment-type (full or part-time), and occupational mismatch in the Japanese labor market following Sahin and others (2013). Between April 2000...

Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

This paper does two things. First, it articulates what are the main implications of theoretical and empirical research for design of labor market policies and labor market institutions. Second, in this light, the paper analyzes the IMF’s labor market recommendations since the beginning of the...

JEL Cl This study constructs a new data set on unemployment rates in Latin America and the Caribbean and then explores the determinants of unemployment. We compare different countries, finding that unemployment is influenced by the size of the rural population and that the effects of government...