[Einleitung:] Arbeitslosigkeit. Einer Heimsuchung gleich beschäftigt dieses Problem nunmehr schon seit etlichen Jahren wie kein anderes die Menschen in Deutschland. Zukunftsangst macht sich breit, weil die Bürger befürchten, daß eine immer weiter steigende Massenarbeitslosigkeit das...

While policymakers in Europe were busy implementing EMU during the past decade, persistently high unemployment, which should have been the main policy issue from a normative point of view, was essentially left untackled in most continental European countries. This poses the urgent question which...

The paper shows that a more flexible labor market is unequivocally necessary for a lasting and substantial reduction of unemployment. It furthermore points out that a more flexible labor market is even beneficial from a long-run distributional point of view. Hence, the key to liberalizing the...