This article examines labor market dynamics in Bulgaria, Italy, and the United Kingdom by integrating demographic pressures, wage and labor cost adjustment, redistribution mechanisms, inequality outcomes, and digital readiness into a single comparative framework. This study first applies...

This paper examines the existence and extent to which the "Baumol cost disease" could have affected aggregate growth in Europe. This would arise if lower productivity sectors began to account for an increasing share of output which would then put downward pressure on the prospective growth rate...

This paper describes the framework used by the Bank of Finland to assess the cost competitiveness of the Finnish economy. We discuss the conceptual foundations, data choices, and methodological trade-offs involved in constructing commonly used indicators, with particular emphasis on...

In den Bundesministerien ist eine massive Stellenmehrung zu verzeichnen. Während die Zahl der Planstellen für Beamte im Jahr 2013 noch bei rund 15.000 lag, ist sie seither um 47 Prozent auf mehr als 22.000 angestiegen. Dabei wurden die zusätzlichen Stellen überwiegend in den oberen und...

This paper studies the cost-effectiveness of targeted payroll taxes for stimulating labor demand. It uses rich administrative data to study the effects of an Italian reform that raised social security contributions for apprenticeship contracts but granted a substantial discount for firms with 9...

Die Strategie der globalen Beschaffung, z. B. das Erzielen von Wettbewerbsvorteilen durch Kostensenkung aufgrund von globalem Outsourcing der Wertschöpfungskette sowie global verteilten und fragmentierten Arbeitspaketen, wird im Kontext mehrerer wachsender globaler Krisen kritisch gesehen....

This study examines the relationship between Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores and labor costs per employee (LCE) in firms operating under different legal traditions, specifically comparing civil law (France) and common law (United Kingdom) countries. Utilizing data from the...

We show that a sticky price model featuring firms' heterogeneity in terms of productivity and strategic complementarities in price setting delivers a strictly positive optimal inflation in steady state, differently from standard New Keynesian models. Due to strategic complementarities, more...

Wie bereits das Jahr 2022 war auch das Jahr 2023 durch die Mehrfachkrise geprägt. Die Inflation war weiterhin hoch bei gleichzeitig geringem Wirtschaftswachstum. Trotz dynamischer Lohnentwicklung gab es weitere Reallohnrückgänge in ganz Europa. Im Euroraum und der Europäischen Union stiegen...

Over the past decades, models of circular and cumulative causation, based on the endogenous relations between prices, exports, and labour productivity, have lost prominence in explaining economic dynamics. We argue that, in the absence of counterbalancing mechanisms, the combination of...

Twenty years after the EU accession of the Visegrád countries-- Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - we analyse their development of unit labour costs and of the labour share in manufacturing for the years 1995 to 2023. Firstly, the labour shares in the Visegrád countries have...

This paper investigates the drivers of inflation in 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries from the first quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2022. Using an amplified price equation and two different panel data econometric techniques, we assess the impact of...

Baumol's (1967) model of 'unbalanced growth' yields a supply-side explanation for the 'cost explosion' in health care. Applying a testing strategy suggested by Hartwig (2008), a sprawling literature affirms that the 'Baumol effect' has both a statistically and economically significant impact on...

This paper uses administrative employer-employee data to uncover the effects of a large payroll tax reduction for minimum-wage workers in France. Exploiting the change in labor costs both at the job level and at the firm level, I find that the policy spurred an additional 13 percentage points...

In employment relationships, a wage is an installment payment on an implicit long-term agreement between a worker and a firm. The price of labor that impacts firm's hiring decisions, instead, reflects the hiring wage as well as the impact of economic conditions at the time of hiring on future...

Over the past decades, models of circular and cumulative causation, based on the endogenous relations between prices, exports, and labour productivity, have lost prominence in explaining economic dynamics. We argue that, in the absence of counterbalancing mechanisms, the combination of...

This paper explores the evolution of non-working time in Spain over recent years by analysing the results of two surveys conducted by the National Statistics Institute: the Quarterly Survey on Labor Costs and the Labor Force Survey. Using time series models and intervention analysis, potential...

Using a representative sample of firms in Belgian manufacturing over 2001Q1-2017Q4, we study the effects of their international sourcing activities and domestic wages on their domestic output prices, as well as the effects of international sourcing on (relative) domestic wages. Controlling for...