Campos, Nauro, El Aynaoui, Karim, Loungani, Prakash, (2016), “European unemployment and labour market reforms: A two-handed approach”, VoxEu, 5 December
Thirty years ago, a distinguished group of economists advocated a ‘two-handed’ approach to unemployment that targeted supply as much as demand. This column examines recent work on the effectiveness of cyclical and structural policies – the two ‘hands’ – targeting unemployment in Europe. It further considers the pressures from greater integration of capital and labour markets on the success of these reforms. Cyclical measures, particularly the easing of monetary policy, have been successful, but further structural reforms are still needed in many countries where average unemployment remains too high.
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- Gali, Jordi, (2015), “Hysteresis and the European unemployment problem revisited”, ECB Forum on Central Banking, May
- Coucheir, Michael, Strban, Grega, Hauben, Harald, (2016), “The Legal and Operational Feasibility of a European Unemployment Benefits Scheme at the National Level”, CEPS, 26 September