This essay starts, after a short introduction on the importance and dimensions of "inclusive growth", with a brief empirical sketch on to what extent Europe has already succeeded with respect to this ambitious goal. The result is quite sobering and gives rise to the question: why is it so? The...

Industry 4.0 and robots are said to speed up productivity thereby inducing a 'quantum leap' towards the 'end of work' and calling for a complete change of social security institutions that have so far been closely linked to employment. Unconditional basic income is the cry of the day, curiously...

The European Commission declared 2022 the "European Year of Youth." Apart from the obvious aim to enhance its visibility and political legitimacy, the Commission responded to the fact that COVID-19 badly affected especially young people, manifested in the rise of youth unemployment and of youth...

We reanalyze the effects of a Danish active labour market program social experiment, that included a range of sub-treatments, including monitoring, job search assistance and training. Previous studies have shown that the overall effect of the experiment is positive. We apply newly developed...

This paper discusses the case for expanding active labor market policy in recession. We find that there is reasonable case for relying more heavily on certain kinds of programs. The argument is tied to the varying size of the lock-in effect in boom and recession. If programs with relatively...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become an increasingly important part of active labor market policies (ALMP) in many OECD countries. Germany is a good example where the spending on start-up subsidies for the unemployed accounted for nearly 17% of the total spending on ALMP in 2004....