Several countries around the world have adopted the inflation targeting regime for monetary policy. Despite the growing literature on the issue, it is not clear whether developing and emerging countries can improve their economic performance by adopting inflation targeting. This working paper...

In this paper, we address the question of optimal wage and income dispersion in a growing economy. If already in the two-persons-case we have to deal with the fact of different marginal products of labor, there are two solutions in principle. Either two different wages are paid (at unanimous...

Survey data from urban China in 2002 show levels of life satisfaction to be low, but not exceptionally so, by international comparison. Many of the determinants of life satisfaction in urban China appear comparable to those for people in other countries. These include, inter alia, unemployment,...

This paper discusses the goal conflict between social protection and economic growth as well as employment. Taking the German economy as an example for the large continental economies of Old Europe, it analyzes twenty mechanisms that affect the fundamentals of the economy negatively and imply...

Using a large panel of administrative records this study confirms the predictions of the ranking model of Blanchard and Diamond (1994) that an individual?s probability of leaving unemployment decreases with unemployment duration and increases with economic growth. However, the ranking model of...

Using a panel of 91 countries, this paper econometrically analyzes how different economic freedoms affect employment and unemployment. There are four main findings. Firstly, a small government sector and a legal system characterized by an independent judiciary, impartial courts and an effective...

In this paper, we present data on recent trends in private consumption and in possible determinants of private consumption (such as GDP, household incomes, household saving rates, household wealth, and employment conditions) in the Group of Seven (G7) countries and find that there has been...

We develop a growth model with unemployment due to imperfections in the labor market. In this model, wage inertia and balanced budget rules cause a complementarity between capital and employment capable of explaining the existence of multiple equilibrium paths. Hysteresis is viewed as the result...

The influence of industrial structure, more specifically of business ownership, is investigated on the level of unemployment in Japan. The question is to what extent business ownership, i.e., entrepreneurship, can reduce the level of unemployment. It will be concluded that Japan is hardly an...

This paper examines regional differences in subjective well-being (SWB) in Germany. Inferential statistics indicate a diminishing but still significant gap between East and West Germany, but also differing levels of SWB within both parts. The observed regional pattern of life satisfaction...