Labor market segmentation refers to a salient divide between secure and insecure jobs and is related to problems in important areas, including macro‐economic efficiency, workers' wellbeing and repercussions for social cohesion. European countries have started a new wave of labor market reforms...

The majority of the Member States of the European Union have undertaken remarkably comprehensive welfare and labor market reforms in the years since the 1990s. Many of these reforms, however, have not followed the conventional retrenchment and deregulation recipes, but rather took a liking to...

This paper provides an overview of the sequential shift towards activating labor market and social policy in Germany. It not only shows the changes in the instruments of active and passives labor market policies but also analyzes the implications of this change for the political economy, the...

With the Hartz reforms active labor market policies in Germany were overhauled considerably. The paper reviews the recent evaluation findings and draws some conclusion for the future setup of active labor market policies in Germany. It argues in favor of a streamlined repertoire of active labor...

Germany has always been one of the prime examples of institutional complementarities between social insurance, a rather passive welfare state, strong employment protection and collective bargaining that stabilize diversified quality production. This institutional arrangement was criticized for...

Labour market institutions are deemed to have a great influence on the level and structure of employment. This holds for regulation on employment protection, minimum wages or tax/benefit systems as well as active labour market policies. This is why policy makers implement labour market reforms...

Over the last decade, both the availability of quantitative indicators on labor market institutions and of studies trying to explain differences in national labor market performance through institutional variables have burgeoned significantly. It is now time to review these indicators and the...

Die Arbeitsmarktreformen der letzten Jahre haben die strukturellen Anpassungsprobleme des deutschen Beschäftigungsmodells zum Teil gelindert - allerdings sind noch längst nicht alle Schwierigkeiten überwunden. Für die Zukunft besteht die zentrale Herausforderung darin, eine...

The European Employment Strategy has set the goal of raising the retirement age of workers in the EU through a strategy of "active ageing". Yet despite some progress over the last decade, empirical data show persistent diversity across EU member states. Institutional arrangements of social and...

The paper takes a comparative perspective on the labour market impact on G20 and EU countries of the financial and economic crisis that began in 2008. It starts from the observation that the decline in employment and rise in unemployment in relation to output or GDP reductions varies...