The NZ labour market is among the most flexible in the OECD, and outcomes for its young people have been among the best. However, labour-market opportunities are heavily determined by initial education, where New Zealand’s system is also successful and innovative in many ways. Average PISA...

This paper presents quantitative information on labour market flows for 25 OECD countries. It uses household surveys that offer the advantage of reporting monthly transitions between employment, unemployment and economic inactivity for individuals. Between 2005 and 2012, the annual probability...

The secular rise of European unemployment since the 1960s is hard to explain without reference to structural change. This is especially true in Germany, where industrial employment has declined by more than 30% and service sector employment has more than doubled over the past three decades....

Using two data sets derived from German administrative data, including a linked employer-employee data set, we investigate the cyclicality of worker and job flows. The analysis stresses the importance of two-sided labour market heterogeneity in this context, taking into account both observed and...

This paper develops a multi-sectorial search and matching model with endogenous occupational choice in a context of structural change. Our objective is to shed light on the way labor market institutions affect aggregate employment, job polarization and inequalities observed in the US and in...

This paper extends Pissarides (1990)’s matching model by considering two sectors (routine and manual) and workers’ occupational choices, in the context of skill-biased demand shifts, to the detriment of routine jobs and in favour of manual jobs because of technological changes. The...

Italy’s low employment rate is associated with adverse labour market dynamics characterised differently across different categories of people. Both job separation and re-employment have remained less frequent in Italy, especially among older workers, against the backdrop of rigid employment...

The conditions under which young workers find their first real post-graduation jobs are both very important for the young's future careers and insufficiently known given their public policy implications. To study these conditions, and in particular the role played by networks, we use a Swedish...

This paper extends a general equilibrium model of unemployment and working hours and evaluates the model on a 5 percent working time reduction for shift workers in Sweden. Panel data from firms' payroll records are used to examine the relationship between standard hours, actual hours and hourly...

The strength of the German labour market response to the financial crisis of 2008-09 demonstrated the benefits of past labour market reforms, which raised work incentives, improved job matching and increased working hour flexibility. Going forward, the government should build on this success and...