In the era of demographic changes and need for rationalization of public expenditure, the European Union social policy promotes the activation approach. In addition, there can be noticed a growing importance of increasing the efficiency of public policies. The authors are presenting the main...

This article introduces the metaphor of the iceberg in the labour market. While policy in most OECD countries has historically focussed on reducing unemployment (the tip of the iceberg), the group of inactive people (below the waterline) is much larger. Therefore, we point to the clear...

This article introduces the metaphor of the iceberg in the labour market. While policy in most OECD countries has historically focussed on reducing unemployment (the tip of the iceberg), the group of inactive people (below the waterline) is much larger. Therefore, we point to the clear...

European countries have increasingly adopted wage subsidies for the sector of domestic services to reduce low-skilled unemployment. Yet, empirical evidence on their effectiveness is scarce. In this paper, we use Belgian administrative data to estimate how participation in the subsidized domestic...

Every year millions of young adults join the labor market in Africa. This paper uses the Jobs of the World Database to compare their job prospects to those of their counterparts in other low-income regions. We show that employment rates are similar at similar levels of development but young...

We compare winning and losing firms in lotteries for H-1B visas, matching administrative data on these lotteries to administrative tax data on U.S. firms and to approved U.S. patents. Winning one additional H-1B visa crowds out about 1.5 other workers at the firm. Additional H-1Bs have...

This policy note examines sectoral and occupational employment impacts of the Covid-19 crisis. The crisis hit EU economies (and advanced economies in general) as they were already undergoing important structural changes due to technological change (digitisation), a factor affecting most...

Within the past decades, employment precariousness has emerged as an alarming phenomenon afflicting labor markets across Europe. While the spread of job insecurity can be traced to specific mechanisms and processes triggered by recent macroeconomic developments, evidence shows how mainstream...

Workers whose jobs are affected by structural change and digitization are required to continuously adapt their vocational skills to the requirements of the labor market. This adaptation is also essential for the competitiveness of their employer firms. The German legislature addressed this issue...

Providing income support to unemployed education-leavers reduces the returns to investments in education because it makes the consequences of unemployment less severe. We evaluate a two-part policy reform in Belgium to study whether conditioning the prospective entitlement to unemployment...