This Paper evaluates an Austrian manpower training programme, which is highly innovative in its content and financing - and could therefore serve as a role model for other programmes. In the late 1980s privatization and downsizing of nationalized steel firms have led to large-scale redundancies....

We study the relationship between employee satisfaction and abnormal stock returns around the world, using lists of the “Best Companies to Work For” in 14 countries. We show that employee satisfaction is associated with positive abnormal returns in countries with high labor market...

The conventional diagnosis of Germany’s poor economic performance focuses on supply-side weaknesses and the need for more vigorous reforms to make low-skill labour markets more flexible. We question this on both theoretical and empirical grounds. In an extended version of a New Keynesian model...

While according to the so-called “Brussels-Frankfurt consensus” sound fiscal policies and structural reforms support each other, it is often claimed that the EU fiscal framework, by reducing the budgetary room of manoeuvre and the political capital of governments, may deter reforms. The aim...

The prevailing labour market models assume that minimum wages do not affect the labour supply schedule. We challenge this view in this paper by showing experimentally that minimum wages have significant and lasting effects on subjects’ reservation wages. The temporary introduction of a minimum...

The ratification of ILO Labour Standards Conventions is a key explanatory variable in the empirical literature linking labour standards to economic performance. The assumption is that ratification gives information about labour standards implemented in a country. This Paper investigates the...

The EU fiscal framework has often been criticized for neglecting a possible trade-off between short-term budgetary objectives and the implementation of reforms that could improve public finances in the long term This concern was reflected in the recent reform of the Stability and Growth Pact,...

Based on a large employer-employee matched dataset, the Paper investigates the effects of variable enforcement of German dismissal protection legislation on the employment dynamics in small establishments. Specifically, using a difference-in-differences approach, we study the effect of changes...

It is widely accepted that in order to improve the economic position of the EU relative to the USA certain structural reforms need to be undertaken, mainly in the labour market. However few EU countries have undertaken such reforms. The reason lies in the fact that those reforms are going to be...

We investigate the effect of counselling and monitoring on the individual employment transition rate. We theoretically analyse these policies in a job search model with two search channels and endogenous search effort. In the empirical analysis we use unique administrative and survey data...