In economies with competitive labour markets social policies harm employment and output. In Europe, in particular, non-competitive labour markets with trade unions, efficiency wages and/or costly search and mismatch seem more realistic. Social policies such as progressive taxation or...

Workfare proposals concentrate on the work incentives for welfare recipients, thus focusing on the labor supply side. This paper analyzes the effects workfare has on labor demand when the labor market is unionized. As workfare reduces the number of recipients of public financial assistance, a...

This survey reviews the recent literature on the double-dividend hypothesis of environmental taxes and discusses some recent extensions of the standard model such as the distributional consequences and the importance of the non-separability assumption between consumption goods and environmental...

This paper considers the optimal level of firm-specific training by taking into account the positive effect of training on the expected duration of workers' current employment. In the framework of an efficiency wage model, a short expected job tenure represents a disamenity that reduces the...

Two macro models - one for a closed economy and the other for a small open economy - are used to examine the scope for income redistribution and employment creation. In particular, the introduction of both a guaranteed annual income (basic income) and an employment subsidy are examined, and...

The macroeconomic effects on growth, investment and private sector employment of different ways of rolling back the welfare state are analysed. Cutting public spending on private goods induces a lower interest rate, a higher wage, a lower capital stock and a fall in employment. Cutting public...

This paper explores how the introduction of an experience rated system of unemployment insurance affects employment and welfare in a model where implicit contracts between firms and workers give rise to wage rigidities and unemployment. In the literature, it has been argued that experience rated...

Two trends have marked the politico-economic discussion in many industrialized countries in recent years. On the one hand, international production, workplace decentralization, shareholder orientation and generous manager remuneration have changed the face of firms in the primary economy. On the...

Redundany payments for collective dismissals are incorporated into a Shapiro-Stiglitz model of efficiency wages. it is shown, that a fixed payment will lower wages, leave employment and welfare unaffected if there are no wage-dependent taxes, no additionalfiring costs and if unemployment...