This paper is concerned with a policy oriented macroeconomic experiment involving an 'international' economy with a relatively small 'home' country and a large 'foreign' country. It compares the economic performance of two alternative tax systems as a means to finance unemployment benefits: a...

We test the hypothesis that local government officials in jurisdictions that have higher local sales taxes are more likely to use fiscal zoning to attract retailing. We find that total retail employment is not significantly affected by local sales tax rates, but employment in big box and anchor...

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...

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...

Using European Community Household Panel data for nine countries for 1996-2001, I investigate the impact of reforms of employment protection systems on employment and on temporary jobs for wage and salary workers. Individual fixed effects models are estimated, with the inclusion of...

In this qualitative sociological and quantitative economic policy paper, we start out from the assumption of a very recent European Commission Background paper on the Efficiency and effectiveness of social spending, which says the effectiveness of social spending can be defined by the degree to...

The majority of the Member States of the European Union have undertaken remarkably comprehensive welfare and labor market reforms in the years since the 1990s. Many of these reforms, however, have not followed the conventional retrenchment and deregulation recipes, but rather took a liking to...

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...

We compare labor market policies, institutions 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 (expenditures relative...

We interpret social transfers broadly as a set of measures to reduce or relieve poverty, and study how well this purpose is served in the countries that participated in the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions in 2007. Motivated by the findings, we characterise a social...