Employment is pivotal to strengthening Greece’s economic recovery, increasing social welfare and redressing poverty. Jobs are returning, making inroads into high unemployment, but their wages and skill levels are lower than many that were lost during the crisis. Greece’s hiring is benefiting...

The strength of the German labour market response to the financial crisis of 2008-09 demonstrated the benefits of past labour market reforms, which raised work incentives, improved job matching and increased working hour flexibility. Going forward, the government should build on this success and...

A statistically significant relationship between the unemployment gap and inflation can be found for a clear majority of OECD countries, but the magnitude of the effect is typically weak. A corollary is that the effect of labour market slack on inflation can often be dominated by other shocks,...

Inflation has become much less sensitive to movements in unemployment in recent decades. A common explanation for this change is that inflation expectations have become better anchored as a consequence of credible inflation targeting by central banks. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, the...

This paper uses a new measure of human capital that works much better in explaining productivity in OECD countries compared to earlier measures of human capital to investigate the educational policy drivers of human capital. A novel methodology is utilised by interacting educational policies,...

This paper reviews recent empirical literature on policy drivers of two educational outcomes - years of schooling and rates of return - that form the OECD’s aggregate measure of human capital. The paper sets the literature findings into the context of current educational polices in place in...

Greece’s labour market entered the COVID-19 shock following several years of sustained employment growth and with wages picking up. Unemployment remained high and employment rates were low, especially among women, the young and older workers. The shock led to a sharp fall in labour force...

This paper develops an analytical framework to identify the policies relevant for firm exit and the channels through which they shape aggregate productivity growth. A range of potentially relevant policies are identified, spanning insolvency regimes, regulations affecting product, labour and...

Do flexibility-enhancing reforms imply more employment instability? Using individual-level data from harmonised household surveys for 26 advanced countries, this paper analyses the effects of product and labour market reforms on transitions in and out of employment. Results indicate that reforms...

Knowing who gains and loses from regulatory reform is important for understanding the political economy of reform. Using micro-level data from 26 countries, this paper studies how regulatory reform of network industries, a policy priority in many advanced economies, influences the labour market...