This article focuses on the role of labour market institutions in explaining different labour market developments in European countries, with a special attention to the new European Union member countries. This may allow us to analyse effects of various institutional setups and of their changes...

This report consists of a comprehensive overview of labour market institutions in the small Pacific island countries in order to propose recommendations to improve the performance of their labour markets. We pay particular attention to three countries: Fiji, Palau and Papua New Guinea. We focus...

The global financial crisis deeply impacted labour markets around the globe. In the case of the United States, some commentators have argued that the subsequent rise in unemployment exceeded previous estimates of the elasticity of the unemployment rate with respect to output growth, a...

In this paper the effects of institutional variables on unemployment are reinvestigated for nine OECD countries. The used framework allow for country specific estimates. In this case, the impact of the considered institutional variables on unemployment may differ across countries, not only in...

Before the great recession of 2008-2009, the "flexicurity" model (with flexibility for firms to adjust their labor force along with income security for workers through the social safety net) attracted attention for its ability to deliver low unemployment. But how did it fare during the...

The supply and demand framework of Katz and Murphy (1992) provides new evidence on the source of changes in socially insured full-time and part-time employment in years preceding and following the implementation of the landmark Hartz reforms in Germany. Our findings are consistent with a stable...

We analyse measures of internal flexibility taken to safeguard employment during the Coronavirus Crisis in comparison to the Great Recession. Cyclical working-time reductions are again a major factor in safeguarding employment. Whereas during the Great Recession all working-time instruments...

For mainstream economics, rigidities in the labour market are the primary determinants of high and persistent long-term unemployment rates, leading to the need to reform labour market institutions and make them more flexible. Flexible labour markets would not only help to smooth normal business...

This paper provides robust estimates of the impact of both product and labor market regulations on unemployment using data from 24 European countries over the period 1998–2013. Controlling for country fixed effects, endogeneity, and a large set of covariates, results show that product market...

The strong and sustained labour market upswing in Germany is widely recognized. In a developing literature, various relevant studies highlight different specific reasons. The underlying study, instead, simultaneously considers a broad set of factors in a unified methodological framework and...