Fundamental reform of traditional Japanese labour market practices is essential to cope with rapid population ageing and the era of 100-year lives. A shift to more flexible employment and wage systems based on performance rather than age would enable Japan to better utilise its human capital....

Australia has a dynamic labour market with high job turnover. According to the HILDA Survey data, about one-fifth of all employees separate from their job every year, and about one fifth of those are displaced workers - laid off for economic reasons. Using multivariate probit regression we find...

The education system has reacted slowly to changes in labour market needs, leading to an increasing number of school leavers without sufficient qualification. In addition, declining PISA scores and a rising share of low achievers are raising concerns about the quality of the future labour force....

This paper identifies the labour market impact of the Great Recession on immigrants compared to natives and how this relationship has evolved since the downturn. We find that the employment penalty suffered by immigrant workers, relative to native workers, increased significantly over the Irish...

Italy’s low employment rate is associated with adverse labour market dynamics characterised differently across different categories of people. Both job separation and re-employment have remained less frequent in Italy, especially among older workers, against the backdrop of rigid employment...

This paper takes stock of the main structural reforms that Greece has undertaken since 2010, those currently proposed and that are in the process of implementation, and quantifies the medium and long‑term effects on output. Special attention is given to three issues that are relevant to...

In the past 30 years Costa Rica has grown steadily and social indicators have improved markedly. Well-being indicators are comparable or even above the OECD average in several dimensions, such as health, environment or life-satisfaction. This paper reviews the social progress that Costa Rica has...

Turkey’s business sector dynamism has underpinned broad-based and inclusive growth in the 2000s. However, the business sector is highly segmented, with a relatively small core of modern high-productivity corporations, and myriad small, less formal and low-productivity entities. This hampers...

Income and earning inequality has been on the rise in most of the OECD and in many emerging economies since the 1980s. This paper estimates a model of earnings inequality across OECD countries that incorporates determinants of relative demand and supply of more and less-skilled labour. Drawing...