Composition of the euro area workforce evolves over time and in response to changing labor market conditions. We construct an estimate of growth in euro area labor quality over the period 1983-2005 and show that labor quality has grown on average by 0.47 percent year-on-year. Labor quality...

Extending the common baseline model does not fundamentally change the low contribution of labor quality to productivity growth in Germany. Labor quality growth is low owing to a small increase in educational attainment of workers and declines in relative returns.

We use firm closure data from social security records for Austria 1978-1998 to investigate the effect of age on employment prospects. We rely on exact matching to compare workers displaced due to firm closure with similar non-displaced workers. We then use a difference-in-difference strategy to...

We use intraday changes in money market rates to construct indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and from official communication of the ECB, and study their impact on the yield curve. We show that communication may lead to substantial revisions in...

We analyse high-frequency changes in the euro area money market yield curve on dates when the ECB regularly sets and communicates decisions on policy interest rates to construct different indicators of monetary policy news relating to policy decisions and to central bank communication. The...

We use a cohort-based model to analyse the determinants of labour force participation in six European economies, focusing on age and cohort effects as factors explaining differences in participation behaviour across countries. Cohort effects are particularly relevant for women with those born in...