This paper explores a development strategy for peripheral economies by advocating for a paradigm shift from traditional economic models that rely on accumulating foreign reserves. It proposes the job guarantee (JG) policy, an automatic stabilizer based on a reserve pool of employed individuals,...

The concept of full employment is associated with diverse economic, political and social aspects. We provide a survey of theory, empirics and policy issues related to full employment. We make a novel contribution by tying together multi-dimensional aspects of full employment regarding...

In this paper, I review the potential of workforce development programs to help the US get closer to "full employment." First, I provide some background on workforce development in the US, and also on the aggregate employment/labor force issues that workforce programs may or may not address....

Orthodox economic theory presents the policy maker with an impossible choice: eradicate unemployment at the cost of undesirable inflation or keep prices stable by maintaining some level of involuntary unemployment. This is the canon, as embodied in the natural rate of unemployment theory and the...

This paper analyses deviations from full employment in EU countries, compared with the US and the UK. We apply the Beveridge (full-employment-consistent) rate of unemployment (BECRU), derived from the unemployment-vacancies relationship. The BECRU is the level of unemployment that minimises the...

This paper analyses (age-adjusted) employment rates by gender and education. We find that malefemale gender gaps and high-low education gaps in employment vary markedly across European Union (EU) countries and regions, with larger gaps existing in Eastern and Southern Europe than in Nordic and...

The concept of full employment is associated with diverse economic, political and social aspects. We provide a survey of theory, empirics and policy issues related to full employment. We make a novel contribution by tying together multi-dimensional aspects of full employment regarding...

Orthodox economic theory presents the policy maker with an impossible choice: eradicate unemployment at the cost of undesirable inflation or keep prices stable by maintaining some level of involuntary unemployment. This is the canon, as embodied in the natural rate of unemployment theory and the...

This paper analyses deviations from full employment in EU countries, compared with the US and the UK. We apply the Beveridge (full-employment-consistent) rate of unemployment (BECRU), derived from the unemployment-vacancies relationship. The BECRU is the level of unemployment that minimises the...

This paper analyses (age-adjusted) employment rates by gender and education. We find that malefemale gender gaps and high-low education gaps in employment vary markedly across European Union (EU) countries and regions, with larger gaps existing in Eastern and Southern Europe than in Nordic and...

The job guarantee is a viable policy option for tackling both unemployment and underemployment. Hyman P. Minsky was one of the seminal writers on this subject. The first part of this working paper provides a survey of Minsky's writings to identify what kind of jobs he had in mind when...

Electoral support for social democracy in Western Europe is in free fall. The implosion of social democracy is largely self- inflicted, because 'Third Way' social democracy alienated its traditional supporters by (a) a deliberate move to the non- reformist, status-quo oriented macroeconomics of...

In this paper, I review the potential of workforce development programs to help the US get closer to "full employment." First, I provide some background on workforce development in the US, and also on the aggregate employment/labor force issues that workforce programs may or may not address....

Ordoliberalism and Keynesianism are not exactly known to fit hand in glove. Accordingly, the German economists Walter Eucken, head of the Freiburg school, and Wilhelm Röpke, from his Istanbul and Geneva exiles, were in near perfect agreement in their opposition to the interventionist "full...

The nature of the non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment is analysed. The focus of our analysis is the role of aggregate demand and capacity in the context of the NAIRU. Two aspects of the relationship between the level of aggregate demand and the NAIRU are of particular significance....

As a bottom-up approach, a Job Guarantee policy can tackle the issue of unemployment on the macroeconomic, socioeconomic, and individual level in a unique way and promote the social inclusion of the unemployed. This paper aims at analysing the potential obstacles - namely inflationary pressure...

This paper shows that important insights for fiscal policy can be derived from Joseph Schumpeter's academic work. This concerns his fundamental distinction between theories in which the monetary sphere is identical with the real sphere ("real analysis"), and theories in which financial sphere is...

In 1933, the German government introduced the marriage loan for newlyweds, a policy aimed at increasing marriages and births as well as male employment, which entailed a work ban for the wife and sizeable credit deductions for children. This paper illustrates that the policy was rather...

This paper shows that important insights for fiscal policy can be derived from Joseph Schumpeter's academic work. This concerns his fundamental distinction between theories in which the monetary sphere is identical with the real sphere ("real analysis"), and theories in which financial sphere is...

The job guarantee (JG) is a public option for jobs. It is a permanent, federally funded, and locally administered program that supplies voluntary employment opportunities on demand for all who are ready and willing to work at a living wage. While it is first and foremost a jobs program, it has...

Full employment in the European Union member states is a challenge but feasible, also in downswings of the business cycle and during stages of increased robotization. It requires a labor legislation that ensures flexibility and retraining, responsive labor sharing during the business cycle and...

The job guarantee is a viable policy option for tackling both unemployment and underemployment. Hyman P. Minsky was one of the seminal writers on this subject. The first part of this working paper provides a survey of Minsky's writings to identify what kind of jobs he had in mind when...

We simulate a small open economy Two Agent New Keynesian (TANK) model featuring ‘learning by doing’ in production whereby changes in employment generate hysteresis in productivity and output. Credit constraints and hysteresis amplify the efficacy of Fiscal stimulus in a small open economy...

This paper begins by identifying nominal price stickiness as the logical basis for the Keynesian or activist point of view concerning demand management policy. It then characterizes two alternative approaches to policy analysis that have been adopted by adherents of the Keynesian position, the...

Using two types of overlapping generations (OLG) model, we show that involuntary unemployment is in a Nash equilibrium of a game with a firm and consumers, and we can achieve full-employment by fiscal policy financed by seignorage not tax. Once we achieve it, it is maintained without government...

This study provides formal theoretical evidence for existence of a `societal incentive mechanism (SIM)', in context of which placements of the unemployed in `alternate firms' in same industry within which they experience dislocation by an agency of Government - a Full Employment Policy (FEP) -...

The paper offers a brief reconstruction of the varying fortunes of the Charter of Workers' Rights, interpreted in light of the evolution of economic thinking on the role of the market - especially of the labor market - and on the reversal that has been made of the role of labor policy in...

President Trump’s faux populism may deliver some immediate short-term benefits to the economy, masking the devastating long-term effects from his overall policy strategy. The latter can be termed "welfare state sabotage" and is a wholesale assault on essential public sector institutions and...

This paper is based on the ideas of political philosopher John Rawls who suggested that a just society is one which would be created behind a "veil of ignorance", that is to say, without knowing where one would end up in the society's distribution of talent and other attributes valued in the...