Card, David , Cardoso, Ana Rute, Heining, Joerg, Kline, Patrick, (2016), “Firms and Labor Market Inequality: Evidence and Some Theory”, IZA Discussion Paper No. 9850, March 2016 We review the literature on firm-level drivers of labor market inequality. There is strong evidence from a variety of fields that standard measures of productivity – like output per worker or total factor productivity – vary substantially across firms, even within narrowlydefined industries. Several recent studies …Read More

Kyriacou, Andreas P., (2016), “Individualism–collectivism, governance and economic development”, European Journal of Political Economy, March While an individualist society prizes personal control, autonomy and individual accomplishments, a collectivist one puts a premium on loyalty and cohesion and imposes mutual obligations in the context of in-groups. It has been argued that, in contrast to collectivism, individualism will promote economic development directly by sharpening individual incentives to invest, innovate and accumulate wealth. In this …Read More

Fidrmuc, Jan, (2015), “Political economy of fiscal unions”, European Journal of Political Economy, December Fiscal unions often use fiscal transfers to counter asymmetric shocks, but such transfers may be politically controversial. I present a model of a two-region fiscal union with region-specific shocks where the threat of secession imposes a limit on fiscal redistribution between regions. I show that both correlation of shocks across regions and their persistence over time are important …Read More

Marx, Paul, Schumacher, Gijs, (2016), “The effect of economic change and elite framing on support for welfare state retrenchment: A survey experiment”, Journal of European Social Policy, February How do economic downturns affect citizens’ support for welfare state retrenchment? Existing observational studies fail to isolate the effect of economic conditions and the effect of elite framing of these conditions. We therefore designed a survey experiment to evaluate how economic change …Read More

Leitner, Sebastian, (2016), “Drivers of Wealth Inequality in Euro-Area Countries The Effect of Inheritance and Gifts on Household Gross and Net Wealth Distribution Analysed by Applying the Shapley Value Approach to Decomposition”, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, Working Paper 122, January This paper investigates the sources of inequality in household gross and net wealth across eight euroarea countries applying the Shapley value approach to decomposition. The research draws on micro data from …Read More

Caliendo, Marco, (2016), “Start-up subsidies for the unemployed: Opportunities and limitations”,  IZA World of Labor 2016: 200, March In order to curb unemployment, OECD countries have made enormous efforts and spent considerable sums on active labor market policies (0.6% of GDP in 2011). Governments have mainly relied on traditional measures such as job creation schemes, training programs, and wage subsidies which have often shown dissatisfactory impacts on income and employment prospects …Read More

McGuinness, Seamus, Pouliakas, Konstantinos, (2016), “Deconstructing Theories of Overeducation in Europe: A Wage Decomposition Approach “, IZA DP No. 9698, February Using a representative sample of adult employees from 28 EU countries, the analysis shows that job characteristics and the low skill content of their jobs account for an equal share of the wage penalty of overeducated workers as supply-side factors. Lack of information about skill needs and career prospects of jobs …Read More

Kleinknecht, Alfred, (2015), “How ‘Structural Reforms’ Of Labour Markets Harm Innovation”, Social Europe, 20 July Structural reforms of labour markets frustrate the diffusion of labour-saving technologies. Moreover, they damage the functioning of the ‘creative accumulation’ innovation model that depends on the long-run accumulation of firm-specific knowledge. It is not by accident that the champions of ‘structural reforms’ of the 1980s (i.e. the US, the UK, Australia or New Zealand) show persistently …Read More

Schneider, Friedrich,  Buehn, Andreas, (2016), “Estimating the Size of the Shadow Economy: Methods, Problems and Open Questions”, IZA DP No. 9820, March This paper presents various methods for estimating the size of the shadow economy and analyzes their strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of the paper is twofold. Firstly, it demonstrates that no ideal method exists to estimate the size and development of the shadow economy. Because of its flexibility, the MIMIC …Read More