What is the impact of time-varying business uncertainty on economic activity? Using partly confidential business survey data from the U.S. and Germany in structural VARs, we find that positive innovations to business uncertainty lead to prolonged declines in economic activity. In contrast, their high-frequency impact is small. We find no evidence of the "wait-and-see"-effect - large declines of economic activity on impact and subsequent fast rebounds - that the recent literature associates with positive uncertainty shocks. Rather, positive innovations to business uncertainty have effects similar to negative business confidence innovations. Once we control for their low-frequency effect, we find little statistically or economically significant impact of uncertainty innovations on activity. We argue that high uncertainty events are a mere epiphenomenon of bad economic times: recessions breed uncertainty.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=1630148

Uncertainty and Economic Activity: Evidence from Business Survey Data

List of figures List of tables Foreword Vito Tanzi 1. The shadow economy: a challenge for economic and social policy 2. Defining the shadow economy 3. Methods to estimate the size of the shadow economy 4. Size of shadow economies around the world 5. The size of the shadow economy labour force 6. An integrated approach to explain deviant behaviour 7. Analysing the causes and measures of economic policy 8. Effects of the increasing shadow economy 9. The 'two-pillar strategy' 10. Conclusion and outlook List of references Index.

The Shadow Economy: An International Survey

Using the first six waves of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), a largescale comparative survey collected annually since 1994, we establish some stylised facts about the extent and determinants of work-related training in European Union (EU) countries. We investigate gender differences within and across EU countries in training participation, using decomposition analysis. We focus on: access to “lifelong learning”, fixed-term contracts, part-time versus full-time work, public/private sector affiliation, educational attainment, and the individual’s position in the wage distribution prior to training. We find that, overall, women are no less likely than men to undertake training and considerably more likely to train in four countries. The differing effects of characteristics and ‘returns’ can explain the gaps. There is no significant training-age profile for women and a strong negative profile for men. In several countries there is a negative association between fixed-term contacts and training, particularly for men. In most countries and, for both sexes, training is positively associated with public sector employment, high educational attainment and a high position in the wage distribution.

Training in Europe

AANGEPAST DOOR ANNE:[-]Dit boek geeft een uitgebreid overzicht van alle sociale hervormingen die de afgelopen dertig jaar in Europa zijn doorgevoerd. Aan bod komen Duitsland, Oostenrijk, Frankrijk, Belgi , Nederland, Spanje, Itali , Zwitserland, Tsjechi , Hongarije, Polen en Slowakije. Bruno Palier toont aan dat al deze landen vergaande hervormingen hebben doorgevoerd in hun zorgstelsel. De oudere structuren, gebaseerd op de eerste sociale zorgstelsels als die onder Bismarck, voldoen niet meer aan de hedendaagse maatschappelijke behoeften. Zo is met de emancipatie van werknemers de hi rarchische structuur veranderd en is de man niet langer vanzelfsprekend de kostwinner van het gezin. Tegenwoordig hebben veel landen een duaal systeem dat onderscheid maakt tussen bescherming van goedfunctionerende burgers en de ondersteuning en motivatie van 'atypische' deelnemers aan de samenleving.[-][-]Bruno Palier is onderzoeker aan de Fondation nationale des sciences politiques in Parijs en wetenschappelijk co rdinator van de European Network of Excellence, Reconciling Work and Welfare in Europe (RECWOWE).[-][-][-]During the 2000s, all continental European countries implemented important structural reforms of their welfare systems (a shift to multi-pillar pension systems, activation, competition in health insurance and care policies outside the family). Even though the changes only became fully apparent over the past decade, this book shows that they must be understood as the culmination of a longer reform trajectory. This book is devoted to the detailed analysis of this reform trajectory. Taken together, the reforms have contributed to a reorganisation of the Bismarckian welfare systems as a whole: they have lost their encompassing capacities, partly turned to activation and employment-friendliness, and weakened the strongest elements of their male breadwinner bias. Instead of the emergence of new hybrid welfare systems, the book concludes that Continental Europe witnessed the development of dual welfare systems that differentiate between the protection of the core workers and the activation of the -atypical (low skilled) ones, and thus contribute to the dualisation of Continental European societies.

/pdf/a-long-goodbye-to-bismarck-the-politics-of-welfare-reform-in-36zn7yk8o6.pdf

A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? : The Politics of Welfare Reform in Continental Europe

Germany experienced an even deeper fall in GDP in the Great Recession than the United States, with little employment loss. Employers' reticence to hire in the preceding expansion, associated in part with a lack of confidence it would last, contributed to an employment shortfall equivalent to 40 percent of the missing employment decline in the recession. Another 20 percent may be explained by wage moderation. A third important element was the widespread adoption of working time accounts, which permit employers to avoid overtime pay if hours per worker average to standard hours over a window of time. We find that this provided disincentives for employers to lay off workers in the downturn. Although the overall cuts in hours per worker were consistent with the severity of the Great Recession, reduction of working time account balances substituted for traditional government-sponsored short-time work.

https://autopapers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/nber_w17187.pdf?abstractid=1879048&mirid=1&type=2

What Explains the German Labor Market Miracle in the Great Recession

Erfolge im Ausland - Herausforderungen im Inland. Jahresgutachten 2004/05

Erfolge im Ausland : Herausforderungen im Inland

Staatsfinanzen konsolidieren - Steuersystem reformieren. Jahresgutachten 2003/04

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/75236/1/ga09_ges.pdf

Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der Gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung

Papers

Erfolge im Ausland - Herausforderungen im Inland. Jahresgutachten 2004/05

Erfolge im Ausland : Herausforderungen im Inland

Staatsfinanzen konsolidieren - Steuersystem reformieren. Jahresgutachten 2003/04

Die Zukunft nicht aufs Spiel setzen. Jahresgutachten 2009/10

Staatsfinanzen konsolidieren - Steuersystem reformieren