The Paper examines the possible effects of introducing a large-scale welfare reform in Sweden, namely, the introduction of comprehensive welfare accounts. Under this policy, individuals make mandatory contributions to accounts, which they can top up with voluntary contributions. In return,...

Macroeconomic shocks and labour-market institutions jointly determine employment growth and economic performance. The effect of shocks depends on the nature of these institutions, and the effect of institutional change depends on the macroeconomic environment. It follows that a given set of...

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...

In this paper we propose a novel way to model the labor market in the context of a New-Keynesian general equilibrium model; incorporating labor market frictions in the form of hiring and firing costs. We show that such a model is able to replicate many important stylized facts of the business...