Economists have traditionally been very cautious when studying the interaction between employment and health because of the two-way causal relationship between these two variables: health status influences the probability of being employed and, at the same time, working affects the health...

Welfare-to-work measures are a central theme of Israel’s labour and social policies to tackle relative poverty, which is concentrated among the Arab-Israeli and Ultra-orthodox (Haredi) communities. Policies include pilot programmes involving private-sector job placement (the “Wisconsin”...

Welfare-to-work measures are a central theme of Israel’s labour and social policies to tackle relative poverty, which is concentrated among the Arab-Israeli and Ultra-orthodox (Haredi) communities. Policies include pilot programmes involving private-sector job placement (the “Wisconsin”...

Labour market outcomes have improved markedly in the past years as the beneficial effects of the economic upswing were reinforced by important structural reforms.With the economy on the verge of a severe economic downturn, it is important to avoid alleviating measures that adversely affect the...

This paper provides new projections on the fiscal impact of age-related spending for OECD countries over the next half century. These results are based on national models using an agreed upon set of assumptions about macroeconomic and demographic developments for all countries. Recent reforms to...

While employment growth has accelerated, allowing unemployment to fall significantly since 2005, many low-skilled workers are still unemployed and the duration of unemployment spells is still long. The introduction of an in-work benefit for workers in low-income households, subject to a minimum...

High levels of unemployment and rising social charges have lead to considerable pressure on labour markets to adjust. Major steps in labour market reform have been implemented over the last three years. These need to be followed up in several respects in order to raise the economy’s capacity...

An overlapping-generations model with search unemployment is calibrated for the Netherlands to assess the impact of tax-benefit reforms on labour supply. Several reforms are analysed, in particular the introduction of a flat tax and pension reforms. The model demonstrates the potential of these...

Norway will face a fast maturing old age pension scheme over the 30 next years whereas oil revenues will supply only a part of implicit liabilities related to the present generation. This working paper examines the recently proposed new measures to strengthen long term fiscal sustainability in...

In Finland, as in most OECD countries, the ageing of the population is one of the major long-term policy challenges. This paper first explores the scale of the demographic changes in Finland, the relevant institutions and their effect on the decision to retire. In light of the increase in the...