Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain were all hit by the economic downturn in the course of the financial crisis and have been struggling with national debt crises and recession. A problem common to all of these countries is the collapse of national demand. Foreign trade might seem a logical way...

Youth unemployment has been on the rise since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. Even more troublesome is the dramatic rise in the number of youth not in employment, education or training, which has led to widespread concerns about the impact on social cohesion and fears of a 'lost...

This paper examines the consequences of using self-reported measures of BMI when estimating the effect of BMI on income for women using both Irish and US data. We find that self-reported BMI is subject to substantial measurement error and that this error deviates from classical measurement...

Disability insurance - the insurance against the loss of the ability to work - is a substantial part of social security expenditures in many countries. The benefit recipiency rates in disability insurance vary strikingly across European countries and the US. This paper investigates the extent...

In recent years the availability of new industry-level data allowed to evaluate the impact of labour market policies more consistently than previous standard cross-country studies. In this paper an industry-level panel is exploited to evaluate the impact of Employment Protection Legislation...

This paper considers the education of the labour force based on an analysis of trends in and the relationships between job polarization and skills mismatch. Both job polarization and skills mismatch have become topics of increasing interest, but relationships between the two have been relatively...

This paper explores the incidence of job loss by wage level during the Great Recession, using data for Ireland. Ireland experienced a particularly pronounced decline in employment by international and historical standards, which makes it a valuable case study. Using EU Survey on Income and...