In this book, first-rate international scholars in the field explore the role that unions are likely to play in the changed economic environment of the new century. Questions discussed include: What will unions look like in the years to come? Which kind of interest groups will they represent?...

We analyse the effects of pension reforms on the planned retirement age of women by exploiting within country variation in pension wealth across cohorts of workers in Italy after the Amato and Dini reforms of the early 1990s, which introduced a quot;Notionally Defined Contributionquot; (NDC)...

The adjustment of labour markets during transition has been quite different from that anticipated by the Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) literature. In particular, it has involved stagnant unemployment pools, large flows to inactivity and strikingly low workers' mobility especially when...

The European welfare states have fundamental problems, in particular high unemployment and a mounting pressure on public pensions. Although these problems have been prominent topics of the political debate for years and years, we have seen little fundamental reform. Why this is so? One of the...

This paper summarises the key findings of a recent study on the impact of Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (EU) on labour markets in the current Member States. The study focuses on three main channels along which enlargement may affect labour markets in the EU, namely i) trade, ii)...