The Brief investigates the role of policy uncertainty in explaining the persistently high unemployment rate in the euro area after the Great Recession and the different impact of uncertainty on flows into and out of unemployment.

This study was prepared by Nina Czernich while she was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research.It was completed in December 2010 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. The study addresses the question whether the emergence of...

"The strong external demand, combined with favourable supply conditions in Germany, has set in motion an economic recovery. There is reason to believe that the upswing will become stronger and more widespread in 1998. For this reason in the middle Variant II of the IAB alterna-tive calculations...

"The prospects for economic development in 1999 are not bad. There is, however, an unusually large degree of uncertainty concerning the future development of the economy and the labour market. In view of this we are basing our alternative projection on a broad range of variation in the...

"The Swiss labour market situation is characterised by certain specific findings: the highest employment rate of all OECD countries, the highest part-time rate (after the 'world-champion in part-time employment', the Netherlands), the largest proportions of foreigners (with the exception of...

"The prospects for Germany's economic development are good at present. Nonetheless there are also uncertainties and downsides. For this reason our labour market forecast for 2000 is based on a range of assumptions for the actual economic growth. The overview includes the basic data of these...