Europe’s labor is not competitiveness taking unemployment as the relevant indicator. The paper looks at other indicators such as job creation, productivity and unit labor costs and skills. It analyzes the reasons for the lack of competitiveness including a low degree of wage differentiation,...

This paper presents a spatial analysis of unemployment rates in Germany. The goal of this analysis is to explain the stubbornly low labor productivity and high unemployment rates in Eastern Germany. We build a model of commuting to distinguish between worker and job characteristics as the main...

In diesem Arbeitspapier wird die Hypothese untersucht, dass die gesamtwirtschaftliche Leistungsfähigkeit unter dem Einfluss demographischer und bildungspolitischer Faktoren steht. Als erstes wird ein Überblick über die Entwicklung des Qualifikationsangebots und der Arbeitsproduktivität in...

The paper concentrates on the question whether the low level of productivity in East Germany can be explained by deficits in the stock of human capital. It is shown that figures on formalʺ qualifications yield a too optimistic view on human capital endowments; in fact, the effective stock on...

The growth rate of total factor productivity seems to have increased recently, at least in the United States. Higher US productivity growth may justify higher stock market valuations than in the past and thus herald an emerging New Economy. However, the size of the estimated growth rate of total...

The paper analyzes the effects of disembodied technological progress on steady state hours worked in the workhorse New-Keynesian model, which features a neoclassical labor market, and its extension that allows for equilibrium unemployment. Both versions of the model are shown to imply a positive...