The paper provides a theoretical rationale for flexicurity policies, which consist of low employment protection, generous unemployment insurance and active labor market programmes. It analyzes in which conditions flexicurity can be optimal. Low employment protection encourages costly education...

This paper considers the role of flexicurity when jobs must be reallocated from a declining, traditional sector to a skill intensive expanding sector. Workers initially decide whether to acquire qualifications for skill-intensive tasks or to accept a less demanding traditional job. Unemployment...

This paper assesses Italy’s 2019 tax and benefit reforms, analyses hypothetical reforms and proposes a reform package that balances goals of reducing poverty, encouraging employment and fiscal sustainability. Using the OECD’s Tax-Benefit and the EUROMOD microsimulation models, it shows that...

Having faced high unemployment rates for more than a decade, the German government implemented a comprehensive set of labour market reforms during the period 2003-2005. This paper describes the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before and after these so-called Hartz...

Having faced high unemployment rates for more than a decade, the German government implemented a comprehensive set of labour market reforms during the period 2003-2005. This paper describes the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before and after these so-called Hartz...

Using a newly constructed macroeconometric model for Germany and the rest of the Euro area, we investigate the macroeconomic effects of structural labor market reforms in Germany. We find that neither the fact that Germany can no longer pursue an independent monetary policy nor the possibility...