Labour Economics

Research in the Labour Economics (LE) programme covers the areas listed below. Information on the LE Programme Directors, Research Fellows and Research Affiliates is available, as well as a list of the programme's research projects.

This new CEPR programme aims to promote research that contributes to our understanding of important policy issues in the field of Labour Economics. It will focus on issues related to the improvement of the functioning of labour markets in Europe. In particular it will deal with the reforms of the welfare states in order to fight unemployment and to raise the quality and quantity of labour supply. Hence,it will deal with policy issues pertaining to the design and evaluation of labour market policies in Europe, the reform of unemployment benefit systems,the introduction of wage subsidies and the provision of in-work tax benefits, the analysis of the effects of migration, the study of the effects of work-sharing, the effects of minimum wages on employment and earnings,the consequences on wage-setting institutions of a single monetary policy in the EU,the effects of youth training and education in the transition from school to work and the harmonization of social policies in the EU.

Our aim is to create opportunities to foster comparative policy analysis based on rigorous empirical research and on the use of recently available data sets. At the same time,we will seek to strengthen our understanding of the political economy processes which give rise to the adoption of appropriate policies in the EU labour markets.

We have selected four initial themes around which to organise the activities of the programme. They are the following:

a) The development of new methods and applications for the evaluation of European labour market policies: training programmes and adult education,unemployment insurance and social social insurance,subsidies and tax breaks for less skilled workers,working time reduction, new employment niches,etc. Sound evaluation research has a very important role to play in Europe where, so far, there is limited knowledge of the effects of those programmes due to methodological problems and the lack in many countries of inadequate souces of data for evaluation research. The situation,however, is beginning to improve as Europe currently has some of the leading researchers in this field and many new sets of data are becoming available.Thus,the LE programme intends to build a strong community of researchers capable of exploiting these new data sets.

b) The effects of migration on the source and host countries: policy response to migration pressures,return migration,discrimination,welfare implications of migration,inmigrant performance,integration of minorities in host countries,migration consequences of EU enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe. The LE programme intends to build upon previous research,based on a TSER grant,undertaken under the CEPR Human Resources Programme to continue deepening into these lines of research.

c) The evolution of earnings inequality in the 1990s : we aim at extending previous research on the effects of trade and technology on earnings during the last decade to ascertain the possible consequences of more flexible labour market policies in Europe, paying particular attention to the effects on permanent income inequality.

d) The construction of Social Europe: harmonization of social regulations,social policy and integration, the demand and supply of social protection as integration proceeds, arguments for coordination ans subsidiarity .

The LE programme tries to raise the profile on economics in relation to policy debates in the different areas previously mentioned, by organising conferences where specific policy proposals derived from the ongoing research can be discussed with policy-makers. Likewise,we intend the LE Programme to become one of the leading cores of Labour Economics in Europe by continuing to hold an annual Summer Symposium in Labour Economics where the best academic specialists can present their work to shed light on those issues through rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis.