Austria is among the very few countries in the European Union which have managed to maintain comparatively low unemployment rates and high employment rates. In international comparison Austrian unemployment is very stable over the business cycle. This is mainly due to the high sensitivity of the...

The paper attempts to establish a few stylised facts about Euroland's labour market given the increasing importance of smoothly functioning markets in the EMU. We assemble econometric evidence regarding labour demand behaviour, wage-setting mechanisms and the cyclicality of unemployment in...

Austria is among the very few countries in the European Union which have managed to maintain comparatively low unemployment rates and high employment rates. This study looks at the price and quantity adjustment mechanisms in the Austrian labour market which may have contributed to this...

EMU is a completely new policy regime which has significant economic implications and which, it is hoped, will ultimately enhance the role of Europe on the world stage. EMU and Economic Policy in Europe takes stock of the initial experiences of EMU and assesses the challenges which will have to...

This note gives a brief survey of main theoretical and empirical issues with respect to the NAIRU concept. According to modern labour market literature NAIRU is defined as the rate of unemployment at which inflation stabilises in the absence of any wage-price surprises. Conventional thinking...

This paper deals with trends and cycles of unemployment and labour-force participation. Empirical evidence on both trends and cyclical movements in unemployment and participation is presented. Some of the mechanisms behind the observed developments are also analysed, examining how well they fit...

This paper seeks to understand labour share dynamics in Europe over the medium run. After documenting basic empirical regularities, we quantify the contribution of shifts in the sectoral and the employment composition of the economy to labour share movements. The findings from the shift-share...

Both common macroeconomic shocks and country-specific developments have subjected the flexibility of wage setting mechanisms in the euro area to a stress test in recent years. Against this background, this paper takes a fresh look at wage flexibility in EMU and attempts to draw a few lessons...