The majority of the Member States of the European Union have undertaken remarkably comprehensive welfare and labor market reforms in the years since the 1990s. Many of these reforms, however, have not followed the conventional retrenchment and deregulation recipes, but rather took a liking to...

Over the last decade, both the availability of quantitative indicators on labor market institutions and of studies trying to explain differences in national labor market performance through institutional variables have burgeoned significantly. It is now time to review these indicators and the...

Different models of protection against labor market risks are associated with diverging models of economic performance. Historically established institutional complementarities between labor market regulation, unemployment protection, and vocational training tend to mirror specific national...

This study contains the results of eight country cases studies carried out in the framework of the European Parliament study on Precarious employment: patterns, trends and policy strategies in Europe. The featured countries are Denmark, France, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and...

This briefing paper provides an overview on the social and employment situation in Ireland. It sets out how the Irish government responded to the financial crisis. In this context, the key measures to combat poverty and social exclusion are presented. Similarly, the authors shed light on the...

This study provides an overview of the different pension systems across EU Member States and describes contingent liabilities and assets in the public and private sectors. Therefore, the study assesses both the recent development of the pension schemes and the current stay of play. As a result,...

The observation of highly regulated, but successful economies has given rise to the hypothesis of various viable models of labor market adaptability. The paper presents a quantitative indicator that tries to avoid a simplified flexibility-rigidity dichotomy and provides a detailed picture of the...