Most of the countries of the OECD are still suffering from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (or as the Americans call it the Great Recession), but the Australian economy appears to be powering ahead. It is a miracle economy! Unlike most of the OECD countries, Australia did not even have a...

According to the French law, the short-time compensation (STC) program aims at avoiding redundancies during short-term downturns. Even if it does not shield establishments from redundancies (Calavrezo, Duhautois and Walkowiak, 2009a), STC can preserve an establishment's survival. This paper...

This paper reviews the development of temporary agency work after its deregulation in the context of the so-called Hartz reforms in Germany. The new role of agency work emerges from its enormous growth after deregulation, the intense use of agency work by big stock-listed companies and upcoming...

Nowcasting has been a challenge in the recent economic crisis. We introduce the Toll Index, a new monthly indicator for business cycle forecasting and demonstrate its relevance using German data. The index measures the monthly transportation activity performed by heavy transport vehicles across...