Now, at the end of the 20th century, many OECD countries face serious problems in achieving both prosperity and social cohesion. One important - and sadly neglected - source of these problems are the very policy systems that are meant to address them. I will argue that these policy systems -...

The paper examines the implications of an important aspect of the ongoing reorganization of work – the move from occupational specialization towards multi-tasking – for centralized wage bargaining. The analysis shows how, on account of this reorganization, centralized bargaining becomes...

This paper explores the influence of wage and price staggering on monetary persistence. We show that, for plausible parameter values, wage and price staggering are highly complementary in generating monetary persistence. We do so by proposing the new measure "quantitative persistence," after...

The paper analyzes a variety of government policies that can stimulate employment when unemployment is generated through the conflicting of interest between insiders and outsiders. It also provides guidelines for identifying policies that may be ineffective. We show how supply side policies can...

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically how employment subsidies should be targeted. We contrast measures involving targeting workers with low incomes/abilities and targeting the unemployed under the criteria of "approximate welfare efficiency" (AWE). Thereby we can identify policies...

This paper shows that when workers have some market power and face substantial uncertainty concerning their productivity, it may be in their interest to formulate their wage claims with a view to the information thereby revealed. This learning behaviour may in turn be responsible for...

The East German labor market has hardly made any progress since German reunification, despite massive migration flows and support from the West. We argue that East Germany is in trouble precisely because of the support it has received. This paper explores the phenomenon of 'the caring hand that...

Do firms reduce employment when their insiders (established, incumbent employees) claim higher wages? The conventional answer in the theoretical literature is that insider power has no influence on employment, provided that the newly hired employees (entrants) receive their reservation wages....