Composition of the euro area workforce evolves over time and in response to changing labor market conditions. We construct an estimate of growth in euro area labor quality over the period 1983-2005 and show that labor quality has grown on average by 0.47 percent year-on-year. Labor quality...

Extending the common baseline model in various dimensions does not fundamentally change the low contribution of labor quality to productivity growth in Germany. Labor quality growth is low owing to a small increase in the share of workers with higher education, a negative contribution from a...

The euro area has experienced a sustained decline in labour productivity growth sincethe 1980s. In the economic literature this phenomenon is commonly explained by adecline in capital deepening and lower total factor productivity (TFP) growth. However,the decline in labour productivity growth...

Composition of the euro area workforce evolves over time and in response to changing labour market conditions. We construct an estimate of growth in euro area labour quality over the period 1983-2004 and show that labour quality has grown on average by 0.6% year-on-year over this time period....

Extending the common baseline model does not fundamentally change the low contribution of labor quality to productivity growth in Germany. Labor quality growth is low owing to a small increase in educational attainment of workers and declines in relative returns.

We use firm closure data from social security records for Austria 1978-1998 to investigate the effect of age on employment prospects. We rely on exact matching to compare workers displaced due to firm closure with similar non-displaced workers. We then use a difference-in-difference strategy to...

Concerns about export growth within the euro area peripheral countries due to a lack of competitiveness within the euro area are a key policy issue. Our analysis suggests that: (i) Long-term price elasticities for intra-euro area exports are at least double those for extra-euro area exports, so...