Labor Reform Policies

The GLO Cluster Labor Reform Policies focuses on reviewing and comparing the impacts of labor market reforms across countries. Many countries have had different labor market reforms across time. Germany in the year 2000s and much later Spain, France and Italy. Labor market reforms cover different dimensions: employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits, short time work, active labor market policies and wage bargaining. Each reform has a specific impact that can be evaluated using econometric methods in partial equilibrium. However, when countries try to learn from each other the best practice of reforms, the attention shifts to the political economy of reforms: the overall impact on the economy and the judgment on the political feasibility of reforms. More broadly, this GLO Cluster includes both studies using policy evaluation methods and studies which tackle the political economy of reforms in EU countries with the purpose of providing academic and policy makers with a large spectrum of reviews of the existing literature and of comparisons across countries.

Cluster Lead: Marco Leonardi

2019 activities:

  • January — 1; 28: Interview with Marco Leonardi about his new book on the Italian labor market reforms.

2018 activities:

May – 5; 23-25: FOM University, Berlin/Germany. 25th Conference of the Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES). Further information can be found here: Conference call; EBES Fellow Award; GLO Activities; Highlights EBES. Workshop presentation of the cluster activities.

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