dinsdag 31 augustus 2010
Des formations pour les travailleurs plutôt que des hausses de salaires
61 millards non déclarés
vrijdag 27 augustus 2010
Top 6 Most Indebted Countries (And Why)
Redesigning the contours of the future financial system
Read this IMF publication here.
Affûter les petites cellules grises
donderdag 26 augustus 2010
Germany 'Has Done Everything Right' on the Economy
La pénurie de généralistes gagne les villes
Lisez l'article dans LLB ici.
Un bulletin mitigé
woensdag 25 augustus 2010
Wages, labor or prices : How do firms react to shocks ?
more than the average European firm to adverse shocks by reducing permanent and temporary
employment. On the basis of a firm-level analysis, this paper confirms that the different reaction
to shocks is significant and investigates what factors explain this difference. Although the
explanatory value of the variables is limited, most of the explanatory power of the model being
associated with the dummy variables coding for firm size, sector and country, the variables
investigated provide valuable information. The importance of wage bargaining above the firm
level, the automatic system of index-linking wages to past inflation, the limited use of flexible pay,
the high share of low-skilled blue-collar workers, the labor intensive production process as well as
the less stringent legislation with respect to the protection against dismissal are at the basis of the
stronger employment reaction of Belgian firms. On the contrary, employment is safeguarded by
the presence of many small firms and a wage cushion. Read the complete Research Paper from the National Bank of Belgium here.
Me Medicine
The Great Recession's Labor-Market Lessons
The Great Recession is showing some unexpected results on the unemployment front. The irresistible job machine that used to be the U.S. labor market continues to sputter. Job creation remains disappointing. A decidedly un-American unemployment rate of close to 10% leaves almost 15 million Americans unemployed. And that is not counting the millions more who are underemployed, or the numerous jobs that are officially and artificially "saved or created" by stimulus spending.
Across the pond, on a European continent traditionally lambasted for its outdated and stifling labor rigidities, the picture is surprisingly less bleak. For sure, European countries have had their fair share of the employment hemorrhaging and have also seen something of the frosty hiring slump that has been the crisis fallout throughout most of the developed world's labor markets. But in relation to their economic performance, many European countries have registered less unemployment increase than the U.S. The list covers almost the entire Old Europe, including such otherwise notorious labor market underperformers as Italy, France, and Belgium.
It used to be different. For decades, Europeans have been told that they need to become more American if they want more growth and more jobs. That conviction eventually morphed into an official European Union agenda for so-called "flexicurity," seeking to combine flexible labor markets with supportive policies for personal employability. Whatever its merits, flexicurity was always more a hype among policy wonks than a reality on the European work floor. The recent reversal in labor-market fortunes has now brought a number of observers to question the mantra altogether. European politicians did not go on a Keynesian spending spree to save jobs. Instead, they to point their countries' built-in labor protections as the reason for their recent outperformance. Union experts have joined the chorus, labeling flexicurity a fair-weather friend and reclaiming old-fashioned restrictions as the guarantors of stability.
This trans-Atlantic comparison is premature. There is simply no quick labor market fix for an economic recession, whatever your policy persuasion may be. Economic differences go a long way toward explaining today's differences in labor-market outcomes among countries. Some countries have been hit more by the Great Recession than others, some have had a major domestic real-estate crisis to add to the global contraction, and some have been able to take better advantage of the rebounding economy in the developing world. Germany's ability to export to Asia helps its domestic employment. A real-estate crisis weighs heavily on unemployment in Ireland and Spain alike, notwithstanding big differences in their respective labor-market models. Beyond the economy there is demography. Aging and immigration affect different countries differently, with ramifications for their respective labor forces and—consequently—unemployment figures.
None of these factors relate to labor-market policies per se, but all of them heavily impact labor-market outcomes. Moreover, the traditional view of the inflexibility of European labor markets is really outdated. Virtually all of the European countries that have rigid and inflexible labor regulations have also grown a wide penumbra of often extremely flexible atypical work. Companies in Europe thus have layers of flexible temporary workers that can be employed, re-employed, and laid off as a matter of course. Such is the legacy of rigid labor markets whose beneficiaries have never accepted overall modernization: a multi-tier market in which insiders enjoy cushy stability for most of their careers at the expense of incoming outsiders. Predictably, the brunt of any labor-market contraction then falls on the outsiders, who either lose temporary work or enter the labor market with very limited job prospects.
The labor-market lesson of the Great Recession so far lies not in the vagaries of unemployment statistics, but in the worsening of the divide between insiders and outsiders. For the responses of virtually all European governments to the current jobs crisis have primarily been aimed at protecting existing jobs even more. Across the Continent, subsidy mechanisms and regulatory measures have sought to avoid redundancies through working-time reduction, temporary-unemployment systems, cash-for-clunkers programs, and the like. As a result, the chasm between the haves and the have-nots on the labor market has only deepened further.
By entrenching existing employment, European politicians and employers have not demonstrated the uselessness of flexible labor markets in times of crisis. They have instead undermined the potential for a downturn to prompt useful job transitions in a period of profound economic change. Europe's internal-market rules did prevent a repeat of wholesale state support as a crisis policy. But its light-version in the labor market has similar consequences. Time will tell whether Europe is—once again—only slowing inevitable transitions and therefore undermining future growth and productivity to the detriment of all, or whether its job shielding will be a jump board and allow companies to grow anew with lower redundancy and recruitment costs.
Whatever the outcome, the bottom line is a labor-market preference for the incumbent at the expense of newcomer. This goes beyond reduced job opportunities as such. The niceties of increased employment protection and automatic stabilizers translate into deficits that will have to be paid by future workers. The same generational arithmetic obviously holds for deficit spending on expanded unemployment insurance and Keynesian job creation in the U.S. Labor-market realities on both sides of the Atlantic thus share what is becoming an overall tendency of our crisis epoch: our generation's unwillingness or inability to pay for its collective mistakes.
Can the NHS Be Fixed?
Het gevaar van een te lage rente
Will the Next Generation be Better off Than Their Parents’ Generation?
La "flexsécurité" à la peine
Berlin présente son projet de loi pour taxer les banques
dinsdag 24 augustus 2010
En Bourse, le vice rapporte autant que la vertu
Income Inequality and Financial Crises
Le patrimoine retrouvé grâce à l'épargne
Lisez cette publication d'ING ici.
The Plight of the Roma
The consensus in favour of Swedish thinking
Combler le bon trou
Angela Merkel countert protest over taks op energiecentrales
La «surprise» à 400 millions du Trésor belge
Zone euro : la croissance de l’activité ralentit en août
maandag 23 augustus 2010
Healthcare competition saves lives
vrijdag 20 augustus 2010
La précarité de l’emploi s’étend
De impact van hoger onderwijs op lonen. Een vergelijkende analyse van verschillende studierichtingen
Lees dit KUL rapport hier.
donderdag 19 augustus 2010
Welfare to work: Sticks rather than carrots
Unblock the real barriers to higher education
Better Schools, or Better Teachers?
Het dilemma van Deleeck
Statistical aspects of the energy economy in 2009
Le danger d'un taux d'intérêt trop bas
Fiscal fundamentalists
Read this article in The Economist here.
Régionaliser ou communautariser ? Quelques arguments vus de Bruxelles
Di Rupo: "il faut atterrir"
woensdag 18 augustus 2010
Radical Britain: The unlikely revolutionary
David Cameron’s Britain has embarked on the toughest fiscal tightening and most drastic decentralisation of any big, rich country. The stakes are high. So are the risk. Read the complete article in The Economist here.
Consensus onder economen, nu nog bij de onderhandelaars
Is jobmobiliteit bevorderlijk voor werkzekerheid? Over loopbaanpatronen en hun effecten
L'économie européenne dépend de plus en plus de l'Allemagne
La révision de la loi de financement, un sujet souvent évoqué
Des retards scolaires trois fois plus élevés chez les étrangers en Flandre
dinsdag 17 augustus 2010
Will public deficit reduction encourage private sector growth, or undermine a needed stimulus to recovery & lead to Japan-style stagnation?
What do economists like Kenneth Rogoff and Richard Koo think? Watch their interventions for the Institute of New Economic Thinking here.
Economists React: Consumer Can’t Drive Recovery
The Communist Approach to Obesity
"Here’s one way to fight obesity: mandatory exercise, as Beijing has commanded again, after a three-year break. “The short-term goal is to involve 60% of the workforces in Beijing by 2011, and 70% of the workforces of the government,” says Zhang Yujing of the Beijing Federation of Trade Unions. “We want all state-owned enterprise workers to have restarted this routine by next year.” The city’s residents seem to support the policy: “I think this [resumption] is really necessary, because people’s living habits are very bad now. They sit in the office the whole day,” said one 30-year-old, who works in marketing. “I have my own exercise plan, but I never put it into practice because I am too busy.”"
Het verloren decennium en het foute kompas
Royaume-Uni : Osborne va défendre sa politique de réduction des déficits
Economy Led to Cuts in Use of Health Care
Unnoticed potential output revisions and their impact on the “stimulus/austerity debate”
Le gaz sera plus cher pour les clients wallons
Augmentation du nombre d'écoles proposant de l'immersion
"Responsabilisons les Régions"
maandag 16 augustus 2010
GDP Surges 2.2 Percent: Greatest Economic Boom Since German Reunification
Werkloosheidsuitkering moet tijdelijk worden
Les Belges ne remboursent plus leurs crédits hypothécaires
Communautariser les soins de santé : avec quels bénéfices pour les patients ?
Une voiture neuve sur cinq est « verte »
Négociations : l’optimisme revient
vrijdag 13 augustus 2010
Banking: the EU stress test and sovereign debt exposures
The great false choice, stimulus or austerity
Une seule « unif » belge dans le classement de Shanghai
donderdag 12 augustus 2010
Social innovation: Let's hear those ideas
In America and Britain governments hope that a partnership with “social entrepreneurs” can solve some of society’s most intractable problem.
“Social innovation is the increasingly common shorthand for this approach to public-private partnerships. It differs from the fashion in the past couple of decades for contracting out the delivery of public services to businesses and non-profit groups in order to cut costs, in that it aims to do more than save a few dollars or pounds—although that is part of its attraction. The idea is to transform the way public services are provided, by tapping the ingenuity of people in the private sector, especially social entrepreneurs." Read the complete article in The Economist here.A Challenge to Extreme Keynesians
Le plan inédit de Mark Eyskens pour « réformer fondamentalement la Belgique »
Grieks scenario voor Verenigde Staten?
La décennie perdue et la boussole détraquée
Debt and growth revisited
Pokeren over 10 tot 15 miljard
Rapport 2010 du Conseil supérieur de l'emploi
Enfin, le principal du rapport est consacré cette année à la problématique des emplois verts.
Hoe sterk worden oudere werknemers getroffen door de crisis?
Lees het rapport van de Vlaamse overheid (expertisecentrum Leeftijd en Werk) hier.
woensdag 11 augustus 2010
Dalende uitkeringen doen werk zoeken
Projecting health care expenditure at European level
Read this EC economic paper here.
Promoting exports full of risk for world economy
The Wage-Productivity Gap Revisited: Is the Labour Share Neutral to Employment?
On est loin de l'école gratuite
Les titres-services coûtent très cher à l’Etat
dinsdag 10 augustus 2010
Het is nog geen lente
The Myth of Authoritarian Growth
France: Réforme des retraites : le rapport de la commission des finances de l'Assemblée nationale
Ageing and the asset meltdown
Bâtiment: la TVA à 6% n'est plus garantie pour 2011
vrijdag 6 augustus 2010
Modèles de carrière et logiques de fin de vie active: quelles leçons de la comparaison européenne?
World Economic Outlook: restoring confidence without harming recovery
Regionale economische vooruitzichten 2009-2015
Optimisation du fonctionnement du Fonds Spécial de Solidarité
" Il faut écrémer les pensions élevées des fonctionnaires "
Is fiscal consolidation likely to boost growth?
Picking winners, saving losers
The Crisis Down Under
14.000 jobs die niemand wil
L’Allemagne est à nouveau la locomotive européenne
Une reprise, quoi que fragile
donderdag 5 augustus 2010
An Age of Diminished Expectations?
Wat moeten wij met een Wereldbeker voetbal?
Duur maar gemakkelijk
Vastgoedbedrijven investeren massaal in rusthuizen
Un tiers seulement des plus de 55 ans travaillent
Financement record en vue dans l'éolien offshore
woensdag 4 augustus 2010
The feasibility to regionalise corporate income taxation
Bernanke: Short Run Deficits Unavoidable
Confessions of an armchair economist
It's Time for Germany to Change Its Immigration Laws
To spend or not to spend: Is that the main question?
The Great Brain Race
Senioren doen ING bakzeil halen
China's Real Estate Bubble Threatens to Burst
Les titres-services ne connaissent pas la crise
dinsdag 3 augustus 2010
Gender gaps in performance pay
Regionale gezondheidszorg lijkt mission impossible
Van brugpensioen naar werkbrug
Gemakkelijker ontslaan is soms goed voor de tewerkstelling
L'Inasti publie des statistiques interactives
Antoine défend le régime wallon d'écobonus
Priorité à la pension légale
maandag 2 augustus 2010
Renewables 2010: Global Status Report
Assessing the effects of ICT in education
The contributions stem from an international expert meeting in April 2009 organised by the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning, in co-operation with OECD (CERI), on benchmarking technology use and effects in education. The contributions clearly demonstrate the need to develop a consensus around approaches, indicators and methodologies.
Read this EU/OECD report here.
De geografie van de sociale zekerheid in België
The pursuit of happiness
Australia ranks equal third with the United States and Sweden in overall life satisfaction among OECD countries, with an average score of 7.9 out of 10, beaten only by Ireland, Norway and Denmark (equal first) and Finland and Canada (equal second).
The AMP.NATSEM Income and Wealth Report: The pursuit of happiness explores life satisfaction trends in Australia, examining how different aspects of people's lives impact on happiness.
Obama's Policies Seen as Better than Bush's for Improving the Economy
What do we know about the causes of the crisis?
The global crisis has left many calling for early warning systems to prompt authorities into action before it’s too late. This column argues that such a system is restricted by our understanding of what caused the crisis in the first place. Indeed, it shows that popular explanations for the current crisis have little to no ability to predict past crises. Read the complete article on EUVOX here.