During the last decade, economists have intensively searched for evidence on the importance of the Balassa-Samuelson (B-S) hypothesis in explaining nominal convergence. One general result is that B-S can at best explain only part of the excess inflation observed in the European catching-up...

We conduct a comparative analysis of Labor Market Policies and outcomes for the EU member states, for the period 2000-2005. We document the main differences in Labor Market Policies across EU members, including new member states after 2004. We focus on indicators of policy generosity...

This paper sheds light on the labor market situation of ethnic minorities in the European Union. Facing a serious measurement challenge and lacking adequate data, we apply several measures of ethnicity and examine various data sources as well as secondary evidence. We find significant gaps...

The eastern enlargements of the EU in 2004 and 2007 have stimulated the mobility of workers from the new EU8 and EU2 countries. A significant proportion of these migrants stayed abroad only temporarily, and the Great recession may have triggered return intentions. However, a return may be...

The Eastern enlargement of the EU was an institutional impetus to the migration potential in Europe. While the overall numbers of migrants from the new member states in the EU15 increased between 2003 and 2007, this increase was distributed unevenly among countries. The proportion of these...

Gender role attitudes are well-known determinants of female labor supply. This paper examines the strength of those attitudes using time diaries on childcare, food management and religious activities provided by the British Time Use Survey. Given the low labor force participation of females from...

This paper briefly reviews the existing literature on potential migration into the enlarged European Union, reconciles the results with recent evidence and presents an additional migration scenario. The estimation procedure accounts for both sending and receiving countries' unobserved...

This paper investigates the effect of ethnicity on time spent on overlapped household production, work and leisure activities employing the 2000-2001 UK Time Use Survey. We find that, unconditionally, white females manage to "stretch" their time the most by an additional 233 minutes per day and...

While global migration is increasing, internal EU migration flows have remained low. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the determinants and scale of European migration. It surveys previous historical experiences and empirical findings including the recent Eastern enlargements....