Since the 1960s, several countries have adopted incomes policies to control inflation that was interpreted as the result of a distributional struggle between business and labour unions. This theoretical framework, termed the "battle of the mark-ups", has also formed the basis for estimating...

The paper investigates empirically the interaction between economic growth performance and political institutions in producing free-market reform. In particular, we explore whether political regime types systematically shape government policy responses to good or bad growth performance,...

Ideologues are quick to explain the current financial meltdown: it's the markets, stupid. Economists agree but add: it's politics too, stupid. Ideologues agree but counter: first and foremost it's capitalism, stupid. Economists agree but reply: §$%&?!, stupid. This is where this short paper...

Low growth and persistently high unemployment in Europe raised the question whether it was the specific features of the European Social Model, which lead to these disappointing results. This paper defines the characteristics of the model, and the differences between submodels applied in...

The increasing employment of women in Europe is not only a result of economic restructuring, but also a consequence of changing family structures, changing expectations, changing wage determination mechanisms and increasing urbanisation. Many of the services which have been outsourced from the...