This paper provides new evidence on the sustainability of public finances in German states (Laender) by exploiting a newly compiled database covering the years 1950 - 2011. Unlike previous studies on Germany, we analyze fiscal sustainability by applying "gsecond generation" panel cointegration...

The European Employment Strategy has set the goal of raising the retirement age of workers in the EU through a strategy of "active ageing". Yet despite some progress over the last decade, empirical data show persistent diversity across EU member states. Institutional arrangements of social and...

This paper assesses the existence and the extent of austerity‐oriented policies in Germany in the aftermath of the 2008‐9 recession. In contrast to the intensive phase of labour market and welfare state reforms in the early 2000s aimed at 'welfare readjustment', we do not see austerity...

The paper takes a comparative perspective on the labour market impact on G20 and EU countries of the financial and economic crisis that began in 2008. It starts from the observation that the decline in employment and rise in unemployment in relation to output or GDP reductions varies...

This paper gives an overview of the transformation of the German labor market since the mid-1990s with a special focus on the changing patterns of labor market segmentation or 'dualization' of employment in Germany. While labor market duality in Germany can partially be attributed to labor...

Most Continental European labour markets and welfare states underwent a substantial transformation over the last two decades moving from a situation of low employment and limited labour market inequality to higher employment, but also more inequality. Germany is a case in point as it exhibits...

With an outstandingly long data set of Swiss cantonal public finances we study whether the Swiss subnational level runs sustainable fiscal policies. Going back to the year 1905, we test for stationarity of cantonal public debt, revenue and spending and for cointegration between cantonal revenues...

In the wake of the financial crisis there has been renewed focus on the importance of a country’s net external debt position in determining domestic interest rates and, relatedly, its vulnerability to a crisis. This paper extends the panel estimation of OECD countries described in Turner and...