Structural reforms in the liquidity trap need not be deflationary. This paper develops a simple framework to study the role that key characteristics of Japan's labor and product markets-labor-market duality and weak corporate governance-play in generating unfavorable wage-price dynamics. The...

This paper examines the macroeconomic interaction between informality and gender inequality in the labor market. A dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model is built to study the impact of gender-targeted policies on female labor force participation, female formal employment, gender wage gap,...

The paper uses a large survey (GSOEP) to analyze the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. It finds that new immigrant workers earn on average 20 percent less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for immigrants from advanced countries,...

We estimate the elasticity of private-sector employment to non-oil GDP in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for GCC nationals and expatriates using a Seemingly Unrelated Error Correction (SUREC) model. Our results indicate that the employment response is lower for nationals, who have an...

We explore the long-term impact of economic booms on labor market outcomes using a novel approach based on revisions to professional forecasts over the past 30 years for 34 advanced economies. We find that when employment rises unexpectedly, forecasters typically raise their long-term forecasts...

In recent years, unemployment rates in some ECCU countries have been among the highest globally. This paper evaluates several factors that could explain them, finding that high unit labor costs, in a context of strong unionization, are significantly associated with high structural unemployment,...

This paper documents recent labor market performance in the Latin American region. The paper shows that unemployment, informality, and inequality have been falling over the past two decades, though still remain high. By contrast, productivity has remained stubbornly low. The paper, then, turns...

Output gap estimates are widely used to inform macroeconomic policy decisions, including in Korea. The main determinant of these estimates is the measure of labor market slack. The traditional measure of unemployment in Korea yields an incomplete estimate of labor market slack, given that many...