labour market institutions (e.g. unemployment benefits, job security legislation and payroll taxes) have complementary …) is unlikely to achieve significant reductions in unemployment. Rather, labour market reform becomes particularly …The paper analyses complementarities among a variety of labour market policies. It shows: (a) that a wide range of …

The paper examines the employment and unemployment implications of permitting unemployed people to use part of their … unemployment benefits to provide employment vouchers to the firms that hire them. This opportunity to transfer unemployment … benefits, `benefit transfers', would help replace the unemployment trap by providing an incentive to seek and provide jobs. The …

people's employment incentives and could achieve reductions in unemployment without reducing the level of support to the …We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment … balances in these accounts are available to them during periods of unemployment. The government is able to undertake balanced …

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 …

The analysis provides a new explanation for two widespread problems concerning European unemployment policy: the … disappointingly small effect of many past reform measures on unemployment; and the political difficulties in implementing more … implement broad-based reform strategies. Our analysis suggests that major unemployment policies are characterized by economic …

This Paper explores the influence of on-the-job training on the employment effect of firing costs. It shows that on …-the-job training (generating firm specific skills) causes firing costs to have a contractionary influence on average employment (over …

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

The paper explores the influence of job security provisions on employment and unemployment. We show that this influence …’ bargaining power in wage negotiations. Specifically, costs of firing and hiring reduce employment and stimulate unemployment when … depends on the persistence of the macroeconomic fluctuations to which the labour market is exposed, and on employees …

This paper explores the two common concepts of the natural rate of unemployment: (i) the stable, long-run equilibrium … rate of unemployment; and (ii) the equilibrium unemployment rate at which there is no tendency for this rate to change … towards which the equilibrium unemployment rate tends with the passage of time). Specifically, it is not a reference point in …

heterogeneous variations in the characteristics of workers and jobs, and firms face adjustment costs in responding to these …