出版社：Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
摘要：In 1994, the OECD published a set of recommendations -- known as the OECD Jobs Strategy -- to deal with high and persistent unemployment that affected many member countries. These recommendations are currently being reassessed by the OECD and this paper contributes to this process. It provides a detailed description of labour market reforms in member countries over the past ten years, together with a short overview of changes in macroeconomic policies and reforms affecting product markets. It attempts to rank countries according with their past reform efforts, using an aggregate reform intensity indicator, and analyses the link, though in a very preliminary way, between reforms and labour market performance. Overall, there is little evidence of a link between initial conditions and subsequent reform efforts, with some countries taking only modest measures despite a poor starting point, while others carrying out ambitious programs even though their initial conditions were already relatively favourable. Over the past decade, member countries have employed very diverse reform strategies, from comprehensive reforms package (Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands) -- as recommended in the initial Jobs Strategy -- to reforms more narrowly targeted on specific fields where deep action was undertaken (France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Ireland). The intensity of reforms has differed markedly across policy fields, with more action being undertaken in areas that are more widely accepted by the population, such as active labour market policies and cuts of labour taxes. Please note that annexes are available on the Economics Department Website at: www.oecd.org/eco/Working_Papers.
关键词：political economy; retirement policies; unemployment insurance; compensation and labour costs; public policy; plant closings; welfare and poverty; wages; capitalist systems; wage level; trade unions; wage level and structure; structure and effect; government policy; time allocation and labour supply (part-time employment; work sharing); severance pay
