Flexicurity labour markets are characterised by flexible hiring/firing rules, generous socialsafety net, and active labour market policies. How can such labour markets cope with theconsequences of the Great Recession? Larger labour shedding is to be expected and thisstrains the social safety net...

The evaluation of labor market policies has become an important issue in many Europeancountries. In recent years, a number of them have opened their administrative databases forevaluation studies. The advantages of administrative data are straightforward: they areaccurate, contain a large number...

In mid-2008, high employment and low unemployment rates characterised the Estonian labour marketin comparison with the average of the EU15 countries. While aggregate outcomes improvedduring 2000-07, large inequalities persisted across regions, ethnic groups, and workers with different...

A substantial number of young unemployed participate in active labor market programs(ALMP) in Germany each year. While the aims of these programs are clear – a fast reintegrationinto employment or enrollment in further education – a comprehensive analysis oftheir effectiveness has yet to be...

Die Gründungsförderung der Bundesagentur für Arbeit ist im Rahmen der aktivenArbeitsmarktpolitik im Rechtskreis SGB III nach wie vor eines der bedeutsamstenInstrumente. Zum 1. August 2006 löste der Gründungszuschuss (§ 57 SGB III) seine beidenVorgänger, das Überbrückungsgeld und den...

The aim of this article is to critically assess the concept of transitional labour markets (TLM) and its scientific importance. It seeks to provide a stock-taking of the methodological tools and discuss future theoretical and methodological perspectives. Since the TLM concept is by definition...

The German Hartz reforms, introduced by the Red-Green coalition government in the years 2003 to 2005, form part of a broader pattern of European activation policies which have become known as new labour policies. The idea of these reforms was to reduce welfare dependency and to boost activity...

The capitalist democracies of western Europe and the U.S. have developed extensive social programs, based on the principle of solidarity, that provide assistance to the destitute, the unemployed, the sick, the disabled, and the elderly. Due in part to growing levels of spending on these...

National labour market institutions interact across national boundaries when product markets are global. Labour market policies can thus entail spill-overs, which suggest that there are benefits from international policy coordination. This paper studies the effects of wage subsidies in an...