This paper reviews the dramatic and widely noted developments in the German labor market in the past decade and surveys the most plausible reasons for these changes. Alternative hypotheses are compared and contrasted. I argue that the labor market reforms associated with the Agenda 2010 – the...

Eastern Germany's recovery from the "unification shock" has been characterized by deep structural change - with apparent repercussions for the West as well - and an integration process involving both capital deepening (extensive and intensive investment) and labor thinning (net out-migration). I...

By any measure, the European Monetary Union and the European Union are in a deep hole. In the summer of 2011 we came uncomfortably close to an uncontrolled sovereign default of an EU country, a member of the European Monetary Union, hardly ten years after the common currency project was...

Using time-diary data from 25 countries, we demonstrate that there is a negative relationship between real GDP per capita and the female-male difference in total work time per day-the sum of work for pay and work at home. In rich northern countries on four continents there is no difference-men...

Standard models of equilibrium unemployment assume exogenous labour market institutions and flexible wage determination. This paper models wage rigidity and collective bargaining endogenously, when workers differ by observable skill and may adopt either individualised or collective wage...

For more than fifty years, the Solow decomposition (Solow 1957) has served as the standard measurement of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in economics and management, yet little is known about its precision, especially when the capital stock is poorly measured. Using synthetic data...

This paper establishes theoretical and empirical linkages between union wage setting and the structure of the wage distribution. Theoretically, we identify conditions under which a right-to-manage model implies compression of the wage distribution in the union sector relative to the nonunion...

Zeitarbeit bietet Unternehmen ein zusätzliches Instrument zur flexiblen Personalanpassung. Zudem eröffnet sie Berufsanfängern und vormalig Beschäftigten einen alternativen Weg in den Arbeitsmarkt. Der vorliegende Aufsatz analysiert die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung, die wechselnden gesetzlichen...

Using Solow-Törnqvist residuals as well as two alternative measurements, we present estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in a sample of 30 European economies for the period 1994-2005. In most of Western Europe, we find a deceleration of TFP growth since 2000. However, the...

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....