Combining information from the firm survey of labor costs with the information about claims filed with the Guarantee Fund by workers whose employers defaulted on their severance pay obligations, the paper analyzes the so-called non-performance problem of severance pay - the fact that coverage,...

A number of trends are changing the nature of social risks and increase the importance of human capital, adaptability and flexibility. This paper discusses the usefulness of a life-course perspective in developing proactive social policies that better fit the changing life cycles of individuals...

Brazilian youth today face enormous difficulties in penetrating the labor market, a situation much different from the one 25 years ago. While females have entered the labor market and increased their employment rate many are unemployed. Youth unemployment reached 19.1 percent in 2002; up from 4.5...

This paper looks at youth labour market trends concentrating on developing and transition countries. Questions relating to the integration of young people into decent work have in recent times once again begun to occupy a central position in Government Policy issues. Recently coordinated efforts...

The paper describes and evaluates unemployment insurance savings accounts (UISAs) a relatively new and not well-known way of providing unemployment benefits. The UISAs reduce work disincentives by allowing recipients to keep their own unused unemployment contributions, and offer the possibility...

Training programs are the most common active labor market interventions around the world. Whether designed to develop skills of young job seekers or upgrading skills of adult workers, training programs are aimed at counteracting employability barriers that hinder the integration of people into...

The paper identifies key labor market and institutional differences between developed and developing countries, analyzes how these differences affect the working of the standard, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-style unemployment insurance (UI) program, and derives...

We first demonstrate that, within a fully integrated economy (FIE) in which there is free mobility of goods and factors, each FIE member's share of total FIE output will equal its shares of the total FIE stock of each productive factor. This equal-share property implies that, if economic...

This study investigates the extent of labour market competition among nativeDutch workers and ethnicminorities, using national survey of the SEO and the Population statistics ofthe CBS. Firstly, the directeffect of immigrants on local labour markets is considered. It is shown thatethnic...