most effective program to bring down unemployment. Public employment services have some impact while subsidized jobs are …We present a theoretical and empirical analysis of different types of active labour market policies (ALMP). In our … empirical analysis we use data on 20 OECD countries covering the time period 1985-99. We find that labour market training is the …

Employment protection is often related to costs incurred by firms when they fire a worker. The stability of the … employment relationship, enhanced by employment protection, is also favourable to the productivity of the job. We analyse … employment protection focusing on this trade-off between adjustment costs and productivity. We show that from a welfare point of …

This Paper explores the optimal interaction between the tax system and unemployment compensation in insuring people … against the risks of involuntary unemployment and low ability. To that end, we introduce search unemployment in a model of … and the unemployment benefit) increases if, for efficient agents, the participation constraint (governing job search …

This Paper presents the results of an experimental study on unemployment benefit sanctions. The experimental set … that discourage the unemployed from risking benefit sanctions (the ex ante effect). We find that both effects matter … outflow from unemployment. …

We model how unemployment benefit sanctions - benefit reductions that are imposed if unemployed do not comply with job … originates from the increased effectiveness of labour supply. We advocate that for a given loss in welfare for the unemployed … search guidelines - affect unemployment. In our analysis we find that not only micro-effects concerning the behaviour of …

This Paper analyses the design of optimal unemployment insurance in a search equilibrium framework where search effort … among the unemployed is not perfectly observable. We examine to what extent the optimal policy involves monitoring of search … featuring indefinite payments of benefits and a system with a time limit on unemployment benefit receipt. The optimal sanction …

The consumption behaviour of UK, US and Japanese households is examined and compared using a modern Ando …-Modigliani style consumption function. The models incorporate income growth expectations, income uncertainty, housing collateral and … credit availability for UK and US but not Japanese households has undergone large shifts since 1980. The average consumption …

on how many hours to work with obvious consequences for the household budget. We therefore model consumption and labor …

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption. This paper exploits liquid …, to explain fluctuations in the ratios of consumption and household debt to income in South Africa, from 1971 to 2005. The … variable with key interactions with drivers of consumption and debt. Credit conditions are proxied by a spline function …

Australian data, we model non-price credit supply conditions within equilibrium correction models of consumption, house prices …, but also interact with key economic variables. We show that credit conditions impact on consumption by: (i) lowering the … real activity; and (iii) facilitating intertemporal consumption smoothing. …