This paper analyzes the effectiveness of the tax and transfer systems in the European Union and the US to act as an automatic stabilizer in the current economic crisis. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 per cent of a proportional income shock in the EU, compared to 32 per cent in the...

We exploit a panel of city-level data with rich demographic information to estimate the distributional effects of Department of Defense spending and its effects on a range of social outcomes. The income generated by defense spending accrues predominantly to households without a bachelor's...

European Social Survey data on 30 countries, covering years 2004-2009, are used to look into joint institutional [and other macro] determinants of the rates of dependent employment without a contract, informal self-employment, and unemployment (secondary jobs are not accounted for). Consistently...

This paper analyses the effect of unemployment insurance generosity and active labour market policy on reemployment stability in Europe. Using EU‐SILC and OECD data, we conduct discrete time survival analyses with shared frailty specification to identify policy effects at the micro and macro...

Today, Europe is a continent of low participation, low employment labor markets. Many observers would like to blame poor employment outcomes on the Euro or on austerity. But these are dangerous distractions from real problems that constitute imperatives for structural reform.There are...

The aim of this work is to assess the effectiveness of active labour market policies carried out by the Catalan Public Employment Services (SOC) during the year 2005. The results obtained from the application of matching techniques show that the probability of finding a job for an individual who...

Why should floors be set under wages and working conditions by labour market regulations? This paper finds that efficiency arguments are questionable, because of the disemployment effects of strict regulation. Regulation is better explained in terms of the choices of the employed semi- and...

The EU experience with youth unemployment has changed over recent years with the launch and re-launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna process. A dramatic shift has taken place from the 1990s emphasis on labour market flexibility as a tool to abate youth long term unemployment to the more...

Since the economic crisis in 2008, European youth unemployment rates have been persistently high at around 20% on average. The majority of European countries spends significant resources each year on active labor market programs (ALMP) with the aim of improving the integration prospects of...

In December 2005, the Belgian government adopted the law on the Intergenerational Solidarity Pact (ISP) aiming at increasing the employment rate of older workers. The main policies of the ISP consist in a pension bonus, reductions in employers' social security contributions and measures...