Oxford Review of Economic Policy - current issue

Introduction

2009-05-20

Factor shares: the principal problem of political economy?

Atkinson, A. B. — 2009-05-20

This paper identifies three reasons for studying factor shares: to make a link between incomes at the macroeconomic level (national accounts) and incomes at the level of the household; to help understand inequality in the personal distribution of income; and to address the concern of social justice with the fairness of different sources of income. In each case, I explore the implications and point to ways in which the analysis could be taken forward in a twenty-first-century treatment of the classical problem of political economy.

Structural reforms in Europe and the (in)coherence of institutions

Amable, B. — 2009-05-20

The aim of this paper is to analyse the consequences of some structural reforms on the institutional coherence of OECD countries, particularly in Continental Europe, and on their economic performance, particularly as regards employment. Because institutions in developed political economies are interrelated through a complex network of complementarities, institutional change has consequences beyond the area concerned in a reform. This also implies that there are complementarity effects in reforms themselves. A challenge of reform programmes is therefore to achieve a new type of complementarity between reformed institutions. The paper presents empirical evidence questioning the compatibility of the ongoing structural reforms in product and labour markets with the existing institutional structures in some OECD countries. The coherence of the flexicurity strategy, i.e. a combination of labour-market flexibility and a generous welfare state, is also questioned, from the point of view of both economic efficiency and political economy.

Unemployment, institutions, and reform complementarities: re-assessing the aggregate evidence for OECD countries

Bassanini, A., Duval, R. — 2009-05-20

There is no or limited consensus on the quantitative impact of institutions on unemployment, which has led some to question the case for structural reforms. Recent studies suggest also that institutions interact with each other and cannot be analysed in isolation. In this paper, we estimate a standard reduced-form model to explore the institutional determinants of unemployment and assess its robustness using a large battery of robustness checks. We show that, although the impact of each individual policy varies across countries owing to policy interactions, the simple linear model can be used to draw inferences for countries with an average mix of institutions. The model is then extended to encompass systemic interactions, in which individual policies interact with the overall institutional framework. We find relatively robust evidence of broad reform complementarities.

Unemployment compensation and high European unemployment: a reassessment with new benefit indicators

Howell, D. R., Rehm, M. — 2009-05-20

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity on work incentives are more ambiguous in a broader behavioural framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment (given income) and know that unemployment has scarring effects in the future. The micro evidence suggests modest effects of changes in generosity, but there are reasons to doubt that the impacts on national unemployment rates are consequential. The empirical case for the orthodox prediction comes from cross-country regressions on the OECD's gross replacement rate (GRR), but the published evidence is mixed, and we find little support in the pattern of annual changes in the GRR and the unemployment rate for OECD countries over the last three decades. We take advantage of new and much improved net replacement indicators from the OECD, which show little correlation with either the GRRs or with unemployment and employment rates. We conclude that the available evidence does not offer compelling support for the conventional view.

Monetary policy and European unemployment

Schettkat, R., Sun, R. — 2009-05-20

In the long history of rising and persistent unemployment in Europe, almost all welfare-state institutions—employment protection legislation, unions, wages, wage structure, unemployment insurance, etc.—have been alleged to have caused and found guilty of causing this tragic development at some point in time. Later, welfare-state institutions in interaction with external shocks were identified as more plausible causes of rising equilibrium unemployment in Europe. Monetary policy has managed to be regarded as innocent. Based on the assertion of the neutrality of money in the medium and long run, the search for causes of European unemployment has shied away from the policy of central banks. But actually the institutional set-up regarding monetary policy is very different between the Federal Reserve System (Fed) and the Bundesbank and its successor, The European Central Bank (ECB). We argue that the interaction of adverse shocks and tight monetary policies may have been the major—although probably not the only—cause of unemployment in Europe remaining at ever higher levels after each recession. We identify the monetary policy of the Bundesbank as asymmetrical, in the sense that the Bank did not actively fight against recessions, but it dampened recovery periods. Less constraint on growth would have kept German unemployment at lower levels.

The Swedish unemployment experience

Holmlund, B. — 2009-05-20

By international standards, unemployment in Sweden remained remarkably low throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. In the early 1990s, however, the unemployment rate increased sharply and hit double-digit levels. The paper argues that the steep rise in unemployment was mainly the result of a series of adverse macroeconomic shocks, partly self-inflicted by bad policies, and partly caused by unfavourable international developments. The extremely contractionary monetary policy in 1992 appears to have had strong and long-lasting effects on unemployment. Institutional factors do not appear as convincing explanations of the steep rise in unemployment in the early 1990s.

Capitalist economies and wage inequality

Salverda, W., Mayhew, K. — 2009-05-20

This article presents new stylized facts on the incidence of low pay and mobility out of low pay for 13 European countries and the USA. Women, the young, the less skilled, and part-timers are generally most at risk, as are those who work in retail, hotels, catering, and personal services. However, the relative importance of these characteristics can vary from country to country. The incidence of low pay varies considerably across countries, as does its trend. No direct link is found to aggregate employment or to the employment rate of the less skilled. Nor does the industrial structure of employment have much effect. However, differences between the low-wage production of goods and of services are important. ‘Inclusive’ labour relations are central in containing the incidence of low-pay. By inclusiveness is meant the existence of mechanisms, formal or informal, to extend terms and conditions negotiated by workers with strong bargaining power to workers with less bargaining power. In some countries a national minimum wage is an essential accompaniment. The article considers the extent to which countries can maintain the more benign institutions that limit low pay.

Must equality and efficiency conflict? The economics of Andrew Glyn

White, S. — 2009-05-20

This paper aims to provide an introductory overview of Andrew Glyn's economics. Throughout his intellectual career, Glyn's central concern was to understand how economic efficiency can be made consistent with egalitarian objectives. In pursuing this concern, his work engaged critically with developments in contemporary capitalism and with different proposals for promoting egalitarian objectives, including revolutionary socialism, social democratic corporatism, and basic income capitalism. Glyn's legacy is a set of works which provide great insight into the development of capitalism and on the limits and possibilities of egalitarian advance.

The writings of Andrew Glyn (1943-2007)

2009-05-20