Over the last 15 years, the reforms of employment protection legislation (EPL) in European countries have mainly eased hiring and firing restrictions for temporary employment while leaving the strict EPL provisions for regular or permanent contracts unchanged. Recent reforms in France follow...

Governments often intervene in labor markets with the aim of reducing inequality and promoting employment. Such intervention often results in wage compression and restrictions on how firms use their workers. This paper investigates the impact of such interventions on the labor market conditions...

In this paper we study the structure of labor market flows in Spain and compare them with France and the US. We characterize a number of empirical regularities and stylized facts. One striking result is that the job finding rate is slightly higher than in France, while the job loss rate is much...

Based on a correspondence experiment covering 3,124 fictitious job applications, the paper identifies and quantifies duration dependence in Germany, with a particular emphasis on company and vacancy characteristics as potential determinants. The experiment reveals that duration dependence...

Based on a correspondence experiment covering 3,124 fictitious job applications, the paper identifies and quantifies duration dependence in Germany, with a particular emphasis on company and vacancy characteristics as potential determinants. The experiment reveals that duration dependence...

In this paper, we provide compelling evidence that cyclical factors account for the bulk of the post-2007 decline in the U.S. labor force participation rate. We then proceed to formulate a stylized New Keynesian model in which labor force participation is essentially acyclical during...

In 2005 the German government implemented the so-called Hartz IV reform, which amounted to a complete overhaul of the German unemployment insurance system and resulted in a significant reduction in unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. In this paper, we use an incomplete-market...

This paper does two things. First, it articulates what are the main implications of theoretical and empirical research for design of labor market policies and labor market institutions. Second, in this light, the paper analyzes the IMF’s labor market recommendations since the beginning of the...

We investigate the effects of meetings between the unemployed and their case workers on the transition rate from unemployment to employment using detailed Danish event history data obtained from administrative registers. We find large positive effects of meetings. The transition rate strongly...

The unemployment rate provides an important gauge of spare capacity in the labour market and the economy more generally. However, other factors also affect unemployment, which complicates its interpretation when informing monetary policy. Statistical methods can be used to estimate the extent to...