You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Left Divided argues that the strength and orientation of the far left is an important and overlooked determinant of social protection outcomes. To demonstrate the counterintuitive effects of having the far-left control significant political resources, the book combines in-depth case studies of Iberia with cross-national analysis of OECD countries.
While Europe is certainly one of the richest and most educated areas of the world, some of the challenges faced by the old continent are staggering: low economic growth, structural difficulties in the labour market, and increasing international competition. Politicians and policymakers may advocate different means of overcoming the potential economic decline of Europe, but most agree that Europe needs to strengthen human capital, its ultimate competitive advantage in the world economy. This book looks at the accumulation of human capital from two perspectives, first through formal education and then professional training. It provides a useful summary of the key characteristics of education and training in Europe and also asks key questions about the fundamental problems with the current educational and training systems. More importantly, the book goes on to discuss which policies are necessary to make existing education and training systems more efficient, while also making higher skills available to a wider range of people.
After the Crisis reassesses the twin projects of structural reform and European integration in the wake of the Great Recession and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. The introduction compares the pre-crises debate to the current situation, and highlights a number of ways in which both reform and further integration may have become more difficult. Chapter 1 surveys the state of the structural-reform agenda, its successes, failures, and priorities for further action. The second chapter focuses on the fiscal-policy response to the crisis and advocates a greater balance between supply-side reforms and demand-side management. The third chapter focuses on the asymmetric shocks across economies in...
Despite conventional macroeconomic theory is based on the idea that demand shocks can only have temporary effects on unemployment, several European economies display highly persistent unemployment dynamics. The theory of hysteresis challenges this view and points out that, under certain conditions, demand disturbances can have permanent effects. In this paper, we find strong empirical evidence of unemployment hysteresis in advanced economies since the 1990s. Relying on an identification scheme instigated by an insider/outsider model, we study the effects of demand shocks allowing for cross-country heterogeneous dynamics, and exploit such heterogeneity to investigate what institutional settings have the potential to soften or amplify the effects of demand shocks. Our results indicate that strengthening labor market institutions that promote a faster adjustment of real wages, removing disincentives for firms to hire and for workers to be employed, and improving the matching between labor supply and labor demand can lessen the effects of adverse demand shocks and lead to a faster reversion of unemployment rates to pre-shock levels.
There is substantial disagreement among policy-makers about how governments should respond to the problem of high unemployment. Thus far there has been little, if any, systematic attempt to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the main unemployment policies available to governments in market economies. Individual policy recommendations are usually made in isolation from one another. This book attempts to provide a balanced assessment of the various policy options, including the following: demand management versus supply-side policy, subsidizing employment and training, restructuring labour market regulations, and reforming the welfare state. The book also examines the political economy of unemployment policy and the effect of this policy on productivity growth.
Recent elections in the advanced western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges -- from both the left and the right. The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. In Anti-System Politics, Jonathan Hopkin traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the post-war model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows vo...
This Element argues that the low dynamism of low- to mid-income Arab economies is explained with a set of inter-connected factors constituting a 'segmented market economy'. These include an over-committed and interventionist state with limited fiscal and institutional resources; deep insider-outsider divides among firms and workers that result from and reinforce wide-ranging state intervention; and an equilibrium of low skills and low productivity that results from and reinforces insider-outsider divides. These mutually reinforcing features undermine encompassing cooperation between state, business and labor. While some of these features are generic to developing countries, others are regionally specific, including the relative importance and historical ambition of the state in the economy and, closely related, the relative size and rigidity of the insider coalitions created through government intervention. Insiders and outsiders exist everywhere, but the divisions are particularly stark, immovable and consequential in the Arab world.
In this controversial essay, Carlos Elías addresses the worldwide phenomenon that is threatening the scientific and economic progress of Western countries. The rise and influence of magic and irrationality in the media, in social networks and at universities is a disturbing phenomenon: many Western students no longer want to pursue STEM (Science, Technologies, Engineering, and Math) careers. This lucid and well-written book addresses one of the key issues of public debate: the deteriorating state of science in Western countries and their governments, and its rise in Asian countries. The author compares two distinct models: the Spanish or Latin model, which closed the door on science with th...
This volume of Contributions to Economic Analysis addresses a number of important questions in the field of business cycles including: How should business cycles be dated and measured? What is the response of output and employment to oil-price and monetary shocks? And, is the business cycle asymmetric, and does it matter?
Evidence-based Policy Making in Labor Economics distills and condenses the best thinking and research on labor economic issues to enable decision makers make better informed policy decisions. Written by well-known labor economists worldwide, research findings on key policy issues are presented in a compact and readable format, as distillations of comprehensive evidence-based research with concise policy recommendations. Designed to act as a quick reference, this guide brings together summaries of over 100 articles published on IZA World of Labor to give busy policymakers and political advisors worldwide instant access to reliable and up-to-date guidance on key policy topics including: asylum and immigration policy, youth unemployment and life-long learning, innovation, and technological change.