Labor markets around the world have become increasingly integrated over the last two decades, with the entry of China, India and the former Eastern bloc into the world trading system, the removal of restrictions on trade and capital flows, and rapid technological progress. At the same time, the...

Over the last 15 years, the reforms of employment protection legislation (EPL) in European countries have mainly eased hiring and firing restrictions for temporary employment while leaving the strict EPL provisions for regular or permanent contracts unchanged. Recent reforms in France follow...

This paper evaluates European structural reforms over the last 20 years, in light of economic theory predictions about interactions between labor and product market reforms. Reforms in labor markets occur at higher frequencies than in product market, which are, however, more coherent. These...

This paper reviews the literature on the informal economy, focusing first on empirical findings and then on existing approaches to modeling informality within both partial and general equilibrium environments. We concentrate on labour and credit markets, since these tend to be most affected by...

The paper provides a quantitative assessment of social returns to education in Italy. It shows that, after controlling for individual characteristics, local average human capital is positively correlated with individual wages, with estimated social returns between 2 and 3 percent. This result is...

Using the IMF's Global Economic Model, calibrated to the European Union, the effects of reform in product and labor markets are quantified for both a large and a small euro area economy. When markups in these markets are reduced, there are sizable long-term gains in output and employment. Most...

This paper, using T-GARCH models, finds that the United States has been the major source of price and volatility spillovers to stock markets in the Asian region during three different periods in the last decade: the pre-Long Term Capital Management crisis period, the "tech bubble" period, and...

Despite far-reaching banking sector reforms and a prolonged period of macroeconomic stability and strong economic growth, financial intermediation in Armenia has lagged behind other transition countries, and interest rate spreads have remained higher than in most Central and Eastern European...

A model for world crude oil and natural gas markets is estimated. It confirms low price and high income elasticities of demand for both crude oil and natural gas, which explains the market power of oil producers and price volatility following shocks. The paper establishes a relationship between...

Is aggressive monetary policy response to inflation feasible in countries that suffer from fiscal dominance? We find that if nominal interest rates are allowed to respond to government debt, even aggressive rules that satisfy the Taylor principle can produce unique equilibria. However, resulting...