In 2007, a working hour cost Austrian manufacturers 29.90 €, 7.8 percent more than the average of the other EU-15 countries. This amount consists of a wage share of 15.88 € plus 14.02 € in non-wage labour costs. At 88.3 percent, the incidental costs were slightly lower than in the previous...

A just income distribution is an important goal of economic policy. Thus the question to what extent this goal has been achieved in comparison to other countries is an important subject of economic research, but, as in many other countries, the statistical basis for an analysis of the personal...

In 2006, an hour of work in the Austrian manufacturing sector cost 29.15 €, or 8.8 percent more than the average in the other EU-15 countries ("EU 14"). This amount was made up of 15.45 € in pay and 13.70 € in incidental wage costs. The latter thus contributed 88.7 percent to the total, or...

Austria's GDP grew by just 0.3 percent in 2014, making for a sluggish economy for the third year in a row. Causes for the sluggishness were not just continued investment reticence on the part of businesses and muted expenditure on the part of private households but also the lack of any strong...

Hampered by the slow economy, sagging growth in workers' productivity caused a rise in unit labour costs in 2013 by some 2.1 percent over the previous year. Combined with an unfavourable exchange rate (+1.8 percent), this affected the unit labour cost position for Austrian goods producers...

The economic crisis has given rise to significant challenges to the welfare state. Given that welfare expenses account for a large proportion of all state spending in the member countries of the European Union, reducing government spending means cutting welfare measures. Yet social protection,...

In many countries, social security insures firms against their workers' sickness absences. The insurance may create a moral hazard for firms, leading to inefficient monitoring of absences or to an underinvestment in the prevention of absences. We exploit an administrative threshold in the...

The modest development in workers' productivity due to the downturn led to a rise in unit labour costs of about 2.1 percent compared to the year before. Combined with an unfavourable exchange rate development (+1.8 percent), this affected the unit labour cost position for Austrian goods...

This report collects and draws conclusions from research papers of Area 1. It summarises the results against the background of the existing literature, focusing in particular on the challenges arising on welfare states from globalisation, post-industrialisation, and demographic changes. The...

The Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact on national labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also varied greatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurance benefits and minimum...