The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the oldest customs union in the world, comprises Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland (known as the BLNS countries), and South Africa. This Selected Issues paper analyzes how policy has responded to the positive SACU revenue shock. It discusses the...

More than a decade after the start of the transition process, unemployment rates remain in the double digits in a number of Central and Eastern European countries. That unemployment rates have failed to decline, even in countries experiencing good growth, is puzzling. In this paper the authors...

In der vorliegenden Studie werden die Folgen der ersten Corona-Welle auf den Arbeitsmarkt in Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Hamburg diskutiert. Für den Analysezeitraum April bis September 2020 wird ein sogenannter Corona-Effekt berechnet. Damit wird der Teil der Veränderung der...

This study investigates the short-term impacts of unemployment in Singapore, a setting without public unemployment insurance. Using monthly panel data from the Singapore Life Panel, we analyze dynamic effects on major life outcomes such as income, spending, health, and subjective well-being over...

The aim of the article is to clarify the controversies surrounding the relationship between inflation and unemployment in the three most economically significant countries in the world (apart from China), namely the United States, Japan, and Germany, during the coronavirus pandemic (from January...

Berlin has benefited significantly from German reunification. However, some persistent problems have accompanied the gains since the fall of the Berlin Wall. These problems include high unemployment, loss of population, and a declining industrial base