In a series of recent IMF papers, Bernal-Verdugo, Furceri and Guillaume (2012a,2012b), Crivelli, Furceri and Toujas-Bernaté (2012), and Furceri (2012) report finding strong evidence that more flexible labour markets are negatively associated with unemployment and positively associated with...

In principle, two different types of working-time instruments were used to introduce working-time changes during the crisis. First, work-sharing schemes (with their country-specific institutional background and public subsidies); second, working-time adjustments based on unilateral or bilateral...