The paper was produced as a background paper on labor issues for the UNDP study "Convergence to the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities." It first looks at the issue of how the labor market institutions of an acceding country like Macedonia should be shaped to further the integration of...

Comparing aggregate statistics and surveying selected empirical studies, this paper shows that the characteristics and results of labour markets in eastern and western Germany have become quite similar in some respects but still differ markedly in others even 25 years after unification. Whereas...

Comparing aggregate statistics and surveying selected empirical studies, this paper shows that the characteristics and results of labour markets in eastern and western Germany have become quite similar in some respects but still differ markedly in others even 25 years after unification. Whereas...

Comparing aggregate statistics and surveying selected empirical studies, this paper shows that the characteristics and results of labour markets in eastern and western Germany have become quite similar in some respects but still differ markedly in others even 25 years after unification. Whereas...

Job creation has lowered unemployment, but the Belgian labour market still faces many challenges. Employment rates remain low, reflecting barriers to finding a job such as low levels of skills and weak work incentives. In addition, the changing nature of work will require faster adaptation of...

Comparing aggregate statistics and surveying selected empirical studies, this paper shows that the characteristics and results of labour markets in eastern and western Germany have become quite similar in some respects but still differ markedly in others even 25 years after unification. Whereas...

Evidence during the nineties about the response of real wages to shocks highlights that this response is substantially lower in European countries than in the United States and that there are important differences among European countries. Which are the reasons that explain these different...

A matching model with labor/leisure choice and bargaining frictions is used to explain (i) differences in GDP per hour and GDP per capita, (ii) differences in employment and hours worked (per capita and per worker), (iii) differences in the proportion of part-time work across countries. The...

In this paper, we analyze the wage effects of the adoption of a labor reform aiming at making labor institutions more flexible. We are working with a quasi-experimental setting referring to a sample of Italian companies before and after the introduction of the Treu Reform (1997). Our...

Labor market integration is typically assumed to raise welfare in the absence of distortions because it allows labor to move to where returns are highest. This result is examined in a parsimonious general equilibrium model in the presence of social capital. Based on evidence that social capital...