It has been suggested in the literature that taxes and subsidies play an important role in explaining the differences in working hours across countries. In this paper I test whether public programmes for family support play a role in explaining this variation. I analyse two types of policies:...

Excessive credit growth, poor risk assessment and lax lending standards in the run up to the 2008 global crisis led to unsustainable debt build-up in banks and related corporates. A weak framework for the governance of largely state-owned banks is likely to have contributed to the misallocation...

Australia has a dynamic labour market with high job turnover. According to the HILDA Survey data, about one-fifth of all employees separate from their job every year, and about one fifth of those are displaced workers - laid off for economic reasons. Using multivariate probit regression we find...

Iceland has high living standards, low poverty, high inclusiveness and one of the most sustainable pension systems. It is the most highly unionised country in the OECD and, in the past, successful social pacts have protected the lowest paid workers during crises, and on occasion helped fight...

In this paper, we explore the drivers of house prices in Norway, using a cross-country panel framework. Empirical results confirm that house prices are determined by numerous demand and supply factors, including income, demographics, macroeconomic conditions, stock of housing and institutional...

This paper examines responses to questions on wage setting features in Slovenia's Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) survey in the institutional and macroeconomic context of the Slovene economy. The question on collective wage agreement did not capture the prevailing institutional arrangement of...

The paper investigates economic performance of the Eastern Slovenia region in the changed economic and policy environment after the accession to the EU. The likely impacts of public expenditure in the field of cohesion and agricultural policy in the period of the Community financial perspective...

We investigate whether workers adjust hours worked in response to windfall gains using data from the European Household Panel. The results suggest that a rise in unearned income has a negative (although small) effect on working hours. In particular, after receiving a windfall gain, individuals...

Fiscal consolidation will go too far if it pushes the economy towards a ?bad equilibrium? with high and growing fiscal deficits and debt, high risk premia on sovereign debt, slumping economic activity and plummeting confidence. In this paper we examine the possible conditions under which fiscal...

In this article we develop a simple and stylised analytical framework, which is both tractable and feasible to estimate, capturing several key dimensions of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. We use it to examine if and how a combination of fiscal consolidation, structural reform and financial...