One of the key issues in economics is the explanation of unemployment. Doing so "modern mainstream macroeconomics" frequently refers to institutional structures in the individual countries (e.g. Layard, Nickell & Jackman 1991, 2006; Carlin & Soskice 2006). However, unemployment within states varies...

This paper analyzes the joint effect of EPL and financial market imperfections on investment, capital-labour substitution, labour productivity and job reallocation in a cross-country framework. In the spirit of Rajan and Zingales (1998) and Ciccone and Papaioannou (2006), we exploit variation in...

Wage developments and related policies that determine labor markets functioning and wage formation processes, are key factors with central importance in EMU. Flexibility in labor markets functioning and wage-setting aiming to nominal and real wage flexibility, has been the most important policy...