Debate over labor market flexibility focuses mainly on firing costs, while largely ignoring wage determination and the need for collective bargaining reform. Most countries affected by the euro debt crisis have two-tier bargaining structures in which plant-level bargaining supplements national...

This paper provides an overview of the employment situation of young and old workers in the EU Member States, setting out the most recent development during the crisis and dealing with policies implemented to promote the employment of both groups. The evidence collected shows that there is no...

This paper provides an overview of the employment situation of young and old workers in the EU Member States, setting out the most recent development during the crisis and dealing with policies implemented to promote the employment of both groups. The evidence collected shows that there is no...

The introduction of NDC public pension scheme in few European countries, such as Latvia, Sweden, Italy, and Poland, in the nineties was motivated, among other things, by the need (i) to ensure the long term financial sustainability of the public pension system by linking pension returns to...

Western Europe has welcomed its new members by shutting the door in the face of the workers coming from the East and making their road to EMU more difficult. Two years down the road of enlargement, some countries are now liberalizing worker flows. Indeed, as shown in this paper, these...

In many European countries, wages are determined by collective bargaining agreements intended to improve wages and reduce inequality. We study the local and aggregate effects of collective bargaining in Italy and Germany. The two countries have similar geographical differences in firm...

Firing frictions and renegotiation costs affect worker and firm preferences for rigid wages versus individualized Nash bargaining in a standard model of equilibrium unemployment, in which workers vary by observable skill. Rigid wages permit savings on renegotiation costs and prevent workers from...

Ten years after the start of transition, there are many puzzles we still have to live with. Why did all countries experience strong declines in output at the outset of economic transformations and most of them are slowly, if at all, recovering from this ?transitional recession?? How can these...

In the Italian public debate growing attention has been recently paid to ?household impoverishment?. Subjective indicators of economic condition show that this concern reflects a common sentiment of the Italian population. On the other hand, estimates based on the Bank of Italy?s Survey of...