Mit der europäischen Währungsunion kam es zu einer Vereinheitlichung der Geldpolitik und zu einem System fixer Wechselkurse. Damit gingen Fehlanreize einher, die gravierende wirtschaftliche Verwerfungen nach sich gezogen haben. Derzeit werden - nicht nur im DIW Berlin - Vorschläge...

Promoting minimum age of employment regulation has been a centerpiece in child labor policy for the last 15 years. If enforced, minimum age regulation would change the age profile of paid child employment. Using micro-data from 59 mostly low-income countries, we observe that age can explain less...

Through flows from 3 states, employment, unemployment and out of the labor force, we analyze the dynamics of labor markets in Chile from 1962-2007. We identify some periods of different labor market regimes and relate them with changes in flexibility. We found that reforms such as that of 1967,...

Die Debatte um einen allgemeinen gesetzlichen Mindestlohn in Deutschland hält an. Mittlerweile sind die branchenbezogenen Mindestlöhne umfassend evaluiert worden. In diesem Beitrag werden die empirischen Untersuchungen zu den Lohn- und Beschäftigungswirkungen des Mindestlohnes im deutschen...

The reaction of the German labor market to the Great Recession 2008/09 was relatively mild – especially compared to other countries. The reason lies not only in the specific type of the recession – which was favorable for the German economy structure – but also in a series of labor market...

A major labour market challenge following the Great Recession is to avoid an increase in long-term unemployment and thus the structural unemployment rate. Active labour market policies may play an important role in this respect. We consider these issues with outset in Denmark which is a country...

This paper attempts to investigate the impact of sectoral wage laws in South Africa. Specifically, we examine the impact of minimum wage laws promulgated in the Retail, Domestic work, Forestry, Security, and Taxi sectors using 15 waves of biannual Labour Force Survey data for the 2000–2007...

This paper presents a case study on reforming a very dysfunctional labor market with a deep insider-outsider divide, namely the Spanish case. We show how a dual market, with permanent and temporary employees, makes real reform much harder, and leads to purely marginal changes that do not alter...

This paper contributes to the policy debate on minimum wage by highlighting its role in enforcing compliance with fiscal rules in economies where underreporting of earnings is widespread. First, I propose a simple model exploring the interaction between the minimum wage and underreporting of...

We provide updated evidence on the effects of living wage laws in U.S. cities, relative to the earlier research covering only the first six or seven years of existence of these laws. There are some challenges to updating the evidence, as the CPS data on which it relies changed geographic coding...