This paper examines the interactions between employment and training policies. Their effectiveness in stimulating income may be interdependent for various important reasons. For example, the more employment policies stimulate the employment rate, the greater the length of time over which workers...

We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment accounts (UA) system. Under the UA system, employed people are required to make ongoing contributions to their UAs and the balances in these accounts are available to them during...

We analyze the interaction among important institutional variables in the labor market (firing costs, minimum wages and unemployment benefits) in determining firm-provided training. We find that the institutional interactions - specifically, their degree of complementarity and substitutability -...

Using a standard dynamic general equilibrium model, we show that the interaction of staggered nominal contracts with hyperbolic discounting leads to inflation having significant long-run effects on real variables.

We explore the far-reaching implications of low-wage subsidies on aggregate employment. Low-wage subsidies have three important effects. First, they promote employment of unskilled workers (who tend to be the ones who earn low wages). Second, by raising the payoff of unskilled work relative to...

The paper analyzes the contemporary organizational restructuring of production and work within firms. We emphasize the shift from a "Tayloristic" organization of work (characterized by significant specialization by tasks) to a "holistic" organization (featuring job rotation, integration of tasks...

The paper analyzes the influence of minimum wages on firms' incentive to train their employees. We show that this influence rests on two countervailing effects: minimum wages (i) augment wage compression and thereby raise firms' incentives to train and (ii) reduce the profitability of employees,...

The analysis provides a new explanation for two widespread problems concerning European unemployment policy: the disappointingly small effect of many past reform measures on unemployment, and the political difficulties in implementing more extensive reform programs. We argue that the heart of...