We analyze a 1960-96 panel of OECD countries to explain why the US moved from relatively high to relatively low unemployment over the last three decades. We find that while macroeconomic and demographic shocks and changing labor market institutions explain a modest portion of this change, the...

Labor turnover costs may or may not decrease average employment in a partial equilibrium model of labor demand depending on the form of the revenue function, on the rates of discount and of labor attrition, and on the relative size of hiring and firing costs. If discount and attrition rates are...

This paper studies the joint distribution of wages and employment levels in simple matching models of job creation and destruction with costly search and firm-specific labour demand shocks. Existing evidence on the relationship between employer size, the mean and variance of employees' wages,...

Smoother labor incomes alleviate credit constraints by reducing workers' desire to borrow, and prospects of upward income mobility have smaller beneficial effects for currently poor workers when borrowing constraints are binding. These simple theoretical insights are consistent with the...

We discuss how a schooling system’s structure may imply that private school enrolment leads to worse subsequent performance in further education or in the labour market, and we seek evidence of such phenomena in Italian data. If students differ not only in terms of their families’ ability to...

Chapter 2 focuses on Switzerland, and specifically on the lessons that Europe can learn from the Swiss experience in maintaining cohesion while supporting diversity, and in reaching pragmatic compromises in the creation of common institutions and policies.

Chapter 3 analyses the much debated issue of austerity and highlights that fiscal discipline is not only needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of public debt, but also for external rebalancing, which is vital to the long-term sustainability of the euro. Finally,

Chapter 4 looks at plans and measures to implement a banking union in Europe and discusses who will pay for future banking crises, and who will end up footing the bill for the latest crisis.

Chapter 1 of the report discusses the immediate macroeconomic outlook for the global economy, with a particular focus on the European situation.