journal articles

We study minimum wage violations over the period 2003–12 in ten Central and Eastern European countries which all have national statutory minimum wages. We measure the incidence and depth of violation, and estimated individual, workplace and macro-level correlates of non-compliance. While the incidence of violation remains relatively low, the workers that minimum wage policies seek to protect appear to be the most likely to be affected by non-compliance. Over time, higher minimum-to-average wage ratios are related to a higher incidence of violation.

We study the changes in the task content of jobs in 24 European countries between 1998 and 2015. We link the O*NET occupational data with the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), and use the methodology of Acemoglu and Autor (2011). The intensity of non-routine cognitive tasks grew in all countries, while the intensity of manual tasks declined. Workforce upskilling was the major factor contributing to these developments. The intensity of routine cognitive tasks grew in most Central and Eastern European countries but declined in Western European countries. This difference is attributed to the contrasting patterns of structural changes in these groups of countries.

This paper aims to identify factors behind cyclical fluctuations and differences in adjustments to shocks in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain (GIPS) and a reference country – Germany. All GIPS countries were more vulnerable to productivity and foreign demand shocks than Germany. They would have experienced lower macroeconomic volatility if they reacted to their shocks like Germany.

We apply a multi-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to study two types of taxation: tax on material inputs used by industry, energy, construction, and transport sectors, and tax on output of these sectors. We allow for the endogenous adoption of resource-saving technologies. We calibrate the model for the EU27 area using an IO matrix. Input and output taxation create contrasting incentives and have opposite effects on resource efficiency. The material input tax induces investment in efficiency-improving technology which, in the long term, results in GDP and employment by 15%–20% higher than a comparable output tax. We also find that using revenues to reduce taxes on labour has stronger beneficial effects for the input tax.

We study the impact of real wage, productivity, labour demand and supply shocks on eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies from 1996–2007 with a panel structural vector error correction model. A set of long-run restrictions derived from the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is used to identify structural shocks, and fluctuations in foreign demand are controlled for. Labour demand shocks emerge as the main determinant of employment and unemployment variability in the short-to-medium run, but wage rigidities were equally important for observed labour market performance, especially in Poland, Czech Republic and Lithuania. We associate these rigidities with collective bargaining, minimum wage, active labour market policies, and employment protection legislation.