How many hours per week should workers in the United States and Germany spend at their paying jobs? The present paper addresses this question by constructing policymakers’ reaction functions capable of modelling the optimal length of working time as a function of the relevant labour market...

The paper investigates whether a decrease in standard working time (the stipulated weekly working time) might produce work-sharing, i.e. a redistribution of a given amount of work over a larger number of employees. To this end, we adopt a structural vector error correction model thought to be...

This paper aims at analyzing whether Active Labour Market Programs (ALMP) could have different effects on unemployment and employment dynamics according to the particular region where the program is implemented. To this end, the research analyses alternative theoretical and econometric models...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between R&D activity, spillovers and employment at the firm level. A reduced form labour demand equation is estimated. R&D expenditures can account for both product and process innovation. The analysis is based upon a new dataset composed of 879...

The aim of this paper is to measure the effect on employment, and other key economic variables, of worksharing policies, minimum wage variations and some other measures of flexibility in a special framework, based on Holden (1988) and Moene (1988), where two different levels of negotiations for...

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the linkage between education and working hours, assumed to be positive as suggested by econometric evidence (Coleman and Pencavel (1993), Costa (1998) and Card (1999)), by using a model à la Acemoglu (1994, 1996) with a labour market characterised...

In this paper we propose the use of a threshold autoregressive conditional heteroakedastic model to examine the dynamic asymmetries in the unemployment rate time series. A simple extension that allows to account for seasonal variation is also considered. The model performance and the effect of...

This paper employs recently developed non stationary panel methodologies that assume some cross-section dependence to estimate the production function for Italian regions in the industrial sector over the period 1970-1998. The analysis consists in three steps. First, unit root tests for...