This paper makes two important contributions. Firstly, it uncovers some of the main economic determinants driving the dynamics of public education spending in Europe. Drawing mainly on the insights provided by Baumol's cost theory, the baseline specification uses unit labour costs and real GDP...

Less than a decade ago, several German states introduced tuition fees for university education. Despite their comparatively low level of about €500 per semester, fees were perceived by the public to increase social injustice and have been abolished recently. Whereas other studies have shown no...

We sketch a visionary strategy for Europe in which full employment is quickly regained by 2020, income inequality is reduced and the economies are more sustainable. We call this scenario "vibrant". It is contrasted with what would happen if present policies continue within the European Union...

We simultaneously estimate a wage and a labor productivity equation where we include regional dummies as explanatory variables. We find that the wage-productivity gap reached 11% for Brussels and 4.2% for Wallonia in the years 2005 - 2012. This was driven by the negative performance in labor...

We assess the differences in downward nominal and real wage rigidity between natives and immigrants in Portugal, using a matched employer-employee database and the International Wage Flexibility Project (IWFP) methodology. This methodology estimates a notional or counterfactual distribution that...

This paper examines gender differentials in earnings in Macedonia, with special emphasis on the role of occupational segregation. The lower earnings of women in Macedonia cannot be explained by gender differences in measured human capital endowments. There is a high degree of segregation of jobs...

In Romania, the communist regime promoted an official policy of gender equality for more than 40 years, providing equal access to education and employment and restricting pay differentiation based on gender. After its fall in December 1989, the promotion of equal opportunities and treatment for...

We estimate real wage cyclicality in the period compressed between 1987 and 2013 using a large administrative dataset of workers in Spain. Real wages are weakly procyclical in Spain and focusing on differences in different phases of the business cycle, we find that differences across expansions...

This paper investigates whether the early experience of non-employment has a causal impact on workers' subsequent career. The analysis is based on a sample of low educated youth graduating between 1994 and 2002 in Flanders (Belgium). To correct for selective incidence of non-employment, we...

In this paper we examine nominal earnings flexibility in Ireland during the Great Recession. The Irish case is particularly interesting because it has been one of the countries most affected by the crisis. Using tax return data that are free of reporting error and cover the entire population of...