Most OECD countries expect growing shortages of highly-skilled labour in the coming two decades, and immigration is viewed as one way of addressing these. Most OECD countries have introduced policies aimed at facilitating the recruitment of such...

This report examines the performance of the Public Employment Service (PES) and the effectiveness of activation strategies in Norway. It covers the role of the key actors in labour market policies, the placement function of the PES, the structure of...

The rapid rise in inflation in 2006-07 has attracted attention – once again – both to how pensions systems should react to changes in prices, and to how they do so in practice. Although inflation is now falling as a result of lower commodity prices...

This paper presents an evaluation of the tax-transfer treatment of married couples in 15 EU countries using the EUROMOD microsimulation model. First, we show that many tax-transfer schemes in Europe feature negative jointness defined as a situation...

In Ireland the placement function of the Public Employment Service (PES) is primarily within FÁS, the Training and Employment Authority, which is supervised by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE). But employment counselling...

in 1991 when the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic commenced transition to a market economy. Labour offices, in addition to providing placement and related services, manage jobseeker retraining and subsidies for job creation, administer unemployment...

The OECD has collected data for public expenditure on labour market programmes (LMPs) continuously since the mid-1980s. For most longstanding Member countries, data according to a consistent classification system and definition of scope are available...

This report documents the main features of the Public Employment Service (PES) in Slovak Republic, with attention to unemployment benefit administration as well as employment services. The current institutional structure was established in 2004. The...

The analyses included in the report show that there are big socio-economic differences in mortality, especially for men, and they appear to have become bigger over time. The report discusses implications of mortality differentials for five major...

This paper explores how uncertainty over investment returns affects pension systems. This issue is becoming more important because of the dramatic spread of defined-contribution pension provision around the world. It has also been highlighted by the...

The current generation of workers can expect lower pension benefits in retirement than the current generation of pensioners. Private, voluntary pension savings will therefore play a greater role in providing for old age. This paper calculates the...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) by OECD-based multinational enterprises (MNEs) in developing and emerging economies has increased dramatically over the past two decades. While generally perceived as beneficial for local development, it has also...

We model the dynamics of social assistance benefit receipt in Britain using data from the British Household Panel Survey, waves 1–15. First, we discuss definitions of social assistance benefit receipt, and present information about the trends between...

1. Reforming pensions looms large over the policy agenda of OECD countries. This is hardly surprising since public spending on pensions accounted on average for 7 per cent of OECD GDP in 2005; and this pension spending effort is set to increase...

This report looks at the extent to which household net worth and disposable income are correlated across individuals. After having briefly discussed the importance of better information on household wealth for social policies, the paper describes the...

Consumption taxes are only rarely assessed for their impact on the economic well-being of individuals. This paper reviews various studies on this issue. It first describes the large differences in the size and structure of these taxes among OECD...

Globalisation is having important effects on labour markets in OECD countries. The global supply of labour has increased enormously with the emergence of China and India. At the same time technological advances have contributed to heightened income...

The Korean labor market has created many jobs over the past several decades, accompanying rapid economic growth. More recently, this favorable job performance has gone hand-in-hand with a rapid increase of temporary employment and other flexible or...

Two-thirds of pension reforms in OECD countries in the last 15 years contain measures that will automatically link future pensions to changes in life expectancy. This quiet revolution in pension policy means that the financial costs of longer lives...

Luxembourg’s unemployment rate - which was extremely low in the 1970s and 1980s, and in the 1990s increased considerably but still remained low compared with other countries - has since 2004 been close to 5%. This report first compares Luxembourg’s...