The recent housing bust has reignited interest in psychological theories of speculative excess (Shiller, 2007). I investigate this issue by identifying a segment of the U.S. population-evangelical protestants-that may be less prone to speculative motives, and uncover a significant negative...

Denmark’s flexicurity model has performed well during the crisis. The actions and the improvement in economic conditions have restored overall stability to the banking system. Private consumption has been dented by the decline in housing prices and net household wealth. Exports have...

The paper discusses the flexicurity model, its key policy elements, and association with a low unemployment rate and a high standard of social security for the unemployed. It provides details of an empirical analysis of unemployment performance and the flexicurity model. It also presents...

France’s economic short-term outlook is positive, and long-term prospects have improved. Fiscal adjustment remains high on the government’s agenda. Tax reforms have improved the economy’s growth potential. Reforms in financial, labor, and product markets are necessary to...

This paper analyzes the determinants of labor market performance in Algeria. When the model is estimated with panel data on a sample of MENA and transition countries for 1995- 2005, the results suggest that lower growth in labor productivity in Algeria is associated with higher unemployment than...

The paper provides a quantitative assessment of social returns to education in Italy. It shows that, after controlling for individual characteristics, local average human capital is positively correlated with individual wages, with estimated social returns between 2 and 3 percent. This result is...

The countries that were once British colonies in the Caribbean share a common language and a colonial history of slavery, dominance of a plantation-based sugar industry, and broadly similar government and administrative traditions. Following independence in the late-1960s economic strategies and...

To understand better Canada's smooth reallocation of labor in response to the recent commodity price boom, but seemingly poor productivity performance, this paper examines job and firm dynamics in Canada relative to the United States. Overall, it finds that while Canada's labor market efficiency...

This paper proposes an ex ante evaluation of the effects of new labor contracts such as the "Contrat Nouvelle Embauche" (CNE) introduced in France in 2005. The lessons we draw are of sufficiently general interest to be applicable to other countries or reforms of employment protection laws. Using...

Using the IMF's Global Economic Model, calibrated to the European Union, the effects of reform in product and labor markets are quantified for both a large and a small euro area economy. When markups in these markets are reduced, there are sizable long-term gains in output and employment. Most...