The paper analyses the EU fiscal rules from a political economy perspective and derives some policy lessons. Following a literature survey, the paper stresses the importance of appropriate incentives for rule compliance in an environment where national fiscal sovereignty precludes the option of...

This paper studies welfare consequences of a soft borrowing constraint on sovereign debt which is modeled as a proportional fine per unit of debt exceeding some reference value. Debt is the result of myopic fiscal policy where the government is assumed to have a smaller discount factor than the...

On the face of it, Austria’s labour market performs very well, which is reflected in one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU. However, while many of the euro area members have recently succeeded in reducing unemployment, the Austrian jobless rate has been on a clearly rising path since...

Working time flexibility is a potentially important lever to foster the reconciliation of work, family, and private life. Giving workers greater autonomy and more control over their working times could empower them to better balance their work and non-work demands. This could then in turn lead...

This report summarises and synthesises the findings of a research project entitled ‘Reconciling work, private and family life: production of statistical reports’, which consisted of six related Short Statistical Reports (SSRs). The SSRs examined the topics of the Barcelona childcare targets...

We examine job flows in the 1990s for a sample of 13 European countries. By using a dataset of continuing firms that covers all sectors, we find firm characteristics to be important determinants of job flows, with smaller and younger firms within services typically having a larger degree of job...

Die AMPDatenbank hat zum Ziel, detaillierte, konsistente und vergleichbare Informationen über die Arbeitsmarktpolitiken der Mitgliedstaaten zu sammeln, die Vergleiche zwischen den verschiedenen Maßnahmen und Ländern erlauben. Die Datenbank wurde als Modul des Europäischen Systems der...