Unemployment insurance schemes face a well-known trade-off between providing income support to those out of work and reducing their incentive to look for work. This trade-off between benefits and incentives is central to the public debate about extending benefit periods during the recent...

As part of a more general process of employment reallocation from less to more productive employers, job-to-job flows tend to be beneficial for productivity and for workers. Thus, when this rate slows, it is important to understand why. In the US, for example, the job-to-job flow rate is now at...

The trend towards labor market flexibility in Europe has typically involved introducing legislation that makes it easier for firms to issue temporary contracts with low firing costs, while not changing the level of protection that is in place for permanent jobs. This has created a strong...

In the transition from central planning to a market economy in the 1990s, governments focused on privatizing or closing state enterprises, reforming labor markets, compensating laid-off workers, and fostering job creation through new private firms. After privatization, the focus shifted to...

Unemployment insurance schemes face a well-known trade-off between providing income support to those out of work and reducing their incentive to look for work. This trade-off between benefits and incentives is central to the public debate about extending benefit periods during the recent...

Recent research has revealed enormous variation in performance and growth among firms, which both drives and is driven by large reallocations of inputs and outputs across firms (churning) within industries and markets. These differences in firm-level outcomes and the associated turnover of firms...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been argued to improve company performance and stimulate growth and employment. Transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) faced a desperate need to join the global economy, to improve their competitiveness and to create jobs through FDI. So, did...

Recent research has revealed enormous variation in performance and growth among firms, which both drives and is driven by large reallocations of inputs and outputs across firms (churning) within industries and markets. These differences in firm-level outcomes and the associated turnover of firms...

Despite declining bargaining power, unions continue to generate a wage premium. Some feel collective bargaining has had its day. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have recently called for the removal of bargaining rights from workers in the name of wage and employment flexibility, yet...

The micro- and macroeconomic effects of the declining power of trade unions have been hotly debated by economists and policymakers. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence shows that the impact of the decline on economic aggregates and firm performance is not an overwhelming cause for concern....