The unemployment protection systems that exist in most Latin American economies are generally considered inadequate in terms of providing insurance to workers. They may also encourage stratified labor markets and impose barriers to the employee’s mobility and the firm's adjustment to changing...

By allowing people to obtain divorce without the consent of their spouse, Unilateral Divorce Laws (UDLs) increase the risk of divorce. Using the staggered introduction of UDLs across European countries, we show that households exposed to UDLs for longer time accumulate more savings. This effect...

The paper reviews national and international experiences with different combinations of in-work benefits, subsidized employment, statutory minimum wages and implicit minimum wages defined by social assistance provisions. It calls for a cautious approach regarding the introduction of additional...

Having faced high unemployment rates for more than a decade, the German government implemented a comprehensive set of labour market reforms during the period 2003-2005. This paper describes the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before and after these so-called Hartz...

Using micro panel data, labor market transitions are analyzed for the EU-member states by cumulative year-by-year transition probabilities. As female (non-)employment patterns changed more dramatically than male employment in past decades, the analyses mainly refer to female labor supply. In...

Different models of protection against labor market risks are associated with diverging models of economic performance. Historically established institutional complementarities between labor market regulation, unemployment protection, and vocational training tend to mirror specific national...