The design of optimal immigration policy, particularly in the face of the spiraling demand for highly skilled workers, such as IT workers and engineers, is a topical issue in the policy debate as well as the economic literature. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from firm-level data...

A Single European Labor Market, particularly involving the free movement of workers within Europe, has been a goal of the European community since the 1950s. Whereas it may entail opportunities and drawbacks alike, the benefits—such as greater economic welfare for most citizens—are supposed...

Drawing upon a comprehensive database of contemporary protectionism, this paper offers an initial assessment of the extent to which our understanding of protectionism may have to evolve. While some long-standing features of protectionism appear to have endured (such as the distribution of...

This paper reviews the background and key policy challenges of the current situation of the Spanish economy. It describes the strengths and weaknesses of Spain’s recent long growth cycle, the real and financial imbalances accumulated towards its end, and the troubles faced at the current...

Recent research convincingly shows that crises beget reform. Although the consensus is that economic crises foster macroeconomic stabilization, it is silent on which types of crises cause which types of reform. Is it economic or political crises that are the most important drivers of structural...

The financial crisis that struck the global economy in late 2008 had its origins in excesses in the US housing market. Its reverberations, however, were felt around the world and nowhere more keenly than in Western Europe. While North Atlantic trade links were in relative stasis, the North...

Short-time work was the 'German answer' to the economic crisis. The number of short-time workers strongly increased in the recession and peaked at more than 1.5 million. Without the extensive use of short-time work, unemployment would have risen by approximately twice as much as it actually did....

Large economic crises require quick policy reactions. They bring a sense of urgency by increasing the cost of the status quo, and may thus force policy-makers to reform. However, large crises increase also uncertainty for many individuals (entrepreneurs, workers, retirees), and thus induce more...

This Paper is the result of the Bank of Italy-CEPR project to construct a monthly coincident indicator of the business cycle of the euro area. The index is estimated on the basis of a harmonized data set of monthly statistics of the euro area (951 series) which we constructed from a variety of...

This paper constructs a theoretical model to study the effects on employment of the introduction of flexible labour contracts (i.e. with low firing costs), which occurred in many European countries in the 1980s, which it then tests on Spanish data. The model predicts that such contracts increase...