We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment accounts (UA) system. Under the UA system, employed people are required to make ongoing contributions to their UAs and the balances in these accounts are available to them during...

This Paper presents a reappraisal of unemployment movements in the European Union. Our analysis is based on the chain reaction theory of unemployment, which focuses on (a) the interaction among labour market adjustment processes, (b) the interplay between these adjustment processes and the...

This paper investigates whether government support can act to increase exporting activity. We use a uniquely rich data set on Irish manufacturing plants and employ an empirical strategy that combines a non-parametric matching procedure with a difference-in-differences estimator in order to deal...

Using a unique firm level data set from the Chinese manufacturing sector, this paper analyses the impact of production subsidies on firms’ export performance. It documents robust evidence that production subsidies stimulate export activity, although this effect is conditional on firm...

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....

The East German labour market has hardly made any progress since German reunification, despite massive migration flows and support from the West. We argue that East Germany is in trouble precisely because of the support it has received. This paper explores the phenomenon of 'the caring hand that...

This paper has two aims. First, it provides simple theoretical models that highlight two channels whereby monetary shocks have permanent real effects and the interactions between these channels. Second, it presents an empirical dynamic model, covering a panel of EU countries, and derives the...

This paper analyses the effect of foreign acquisition on survival probability and employment growth of target plant using data on Swedish manufacturing plants during the period 1993-2002. An improvement over previous studies is that we take into account firm level heterogeneity by separating the...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the causal effect of foreign acquisition on R&D intensity in targeted domestic firms. We are able to distinguish domestic multinationals and non-multinationals, which allows us to investigate the fear that the change in ownership of domestic to foreign...