We examine the economic and social determinants of suicide mortality in a panel of 25 OECD countries over the period 1970 – 2011 and explicitly analyze the effects of unemployment and labor market institutions on suicide rates. In line with a large body of literature our results suggest that...

This paper reviews empirical evidence, especially from Europe, on how education and training policies can be designed to advance both efficiency and equity. Returns to educational investments tend to decrease over the life cycle. Moreover, they seem to be highest for children from disadvantaged...

We argue in favor of the shareholder model of the firm for three main reasons. First, serving multiple stakeholders leads to ill-defined property rights. What sounds like a fair compromise between stakeholders can easily evolve in a permanent struggle about the ultimate goal of the company....

Reforms of employment protection (EPL) in Europe eased the recourse to temporary forms of employment while not reducing the strictness of EPL of permanent jobs (with the exception of Spain). Since 1990, such two-tier reforms have been implemented in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the...

The current unemployment insurance and employment protection legislation were set up in an environment in which relationships between workers and firms were typically long-lasting and stable. The increasing globalisation of the economy and the rapid technological and organisational changes...

We study the effects of employment protection taking into account that firms can invest in R&D or buy new technologies in order to restore their productivity. To do so we develop an equilibrium matching model with an imperfect labor and innovation market. If employment protection is introduced,...

The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in research on various labor market institutions. This paper offers a brief overview and discussion of research on the labor market impacts of minimum wages (MW), unemployment insurance (UI), and employment protection legislation (EPL). It is...

Economic theory predicts that consumption growth rates should be highly correlated across countries. Empirical evidence overwhelmingly rejects this prediction. We examine whether increased financial integration and labour market rigidities can help explain this apparent contradiction between...

We analyse how different labour market institutions - employment protection versusflexicurity - affect technology adoption in unionised firms. We consider both trade unions’ incentives to oppose or endorse labour-saving technology, and firms’ incentives to invest in such technology. We find...

This paper deals with the effects of labour market institutions on labour market performance. We analyse as an indicator for the labour intensity of output growth the employment threshold (the minimum growth rate of output necessary to keep employment constant). We show for a sample of 17 OECD...