Short-time work is a labor market policy that subsidizes working time reductions among firms in financial difficulty in order to prevent layoffs and stabilize employment. Many OECD countries have used this policy in the Great Recession, for example. This paper shows that the effects of...

Should the China-U.S. trade agreement prompt relief because it averts a damaging trade war or concern because selective preferential access for the United States to China's markets breaks multilateral rules against discrimination? The answer depends on how China implements the agreement....

High levels of trade costs persist in the world trading system, despite recent progress in tariff reduction, trade facilitation, and logistics. At least some of these costs can be attributed to non-tariff measures (NTMs), policies imposed by governments other than ordinary customs duties which...

Experience from previous global and food crises provides some guidance for appropriate trade responses during the crisis and those that are likely to undermine effective national and global responses. However, the speed, scale and nature of this crisis are unprecedented which requires thinking...

This paper presents new high-frequency data on trade policy changes targeting medical and food products since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, documenting how countries used trade policy instruments in response to the health crisis on a week-by-week basis. The data set reveals a rapid...

Demographic change implies an increasing demand for elderly care and a lower labor force potential at the same time. Training unemployed workers in care occupations might mitigate this problem. This study analyzes the effectiveness of subsidized training in elderly care professions for the...

This paper analyzes Germany's unusual labor market experience during the Great Recession. We estimate a general equilibrium model with a detailed labor market block for postunification Germany. This allows us to disentangle the role of institutions (short-time work, government spending rules)...

The number of unemployed workers in Germany decreased dramatically from its peak in February 2005 at over 5.2 million to 3.6 million by 2008. At the same time, employment increased by 1.2 million. Most theoretical and empirical analyses of this episode assume that a worker leaving unemployment...