The development of European labour markets

Abstract

"In September 1999, 288 economists met at the University of Regensburg to attend the 11th Annual Conference of the European Association of Labour Economists (EALE). In this paper some of the main topics of the conference are summarised. A particular highlight of the conference was the Adam Smith Lecture given by Prof. Alan B. Krueger. Krueger spoke about the future of the European Social State. In this lecture he came to the central conclusion that even under the conditions of burgeoning economic integration sufficient leeway remains for independent national solutions. Krueger stressed that employment policy and social security systems are needed as buffers in the case of fluctuations in the business cycle of the world economy especially in those nations with a high degree of integration in the world market. In his keynote speech Prof. Guiseppe Bertola examined the economic mechanisms that are triggered off by the European Economic and Monetary Union. His lecture focused on the effects on the regional labour markets. According to Bertola it is necessary to deregulate the labour market institutions in the European countries to a certain extent and to make them more flexible. Like Krueger, however, he does not see the core of the social security systems as being in danger. Prof. Dennis J. Snower's lecture dealt with the "organisational revolution" at the workplace. He explained that the far-reaching changes associated with this make necessary a re-orientation of the institutional basic conditions. This was exemplified by unemployment insurance, for which Snower proposed a completely new concept. Methodologically innovative ideas were the focus of Prof. Ernst Fehr's lecture. Fehr presented the approach of experimental economics and investigated the implications for labour economics. Fehr put this into concrete terms on the basis of labour supply, labour demand and wage formation. Besides the keynote speeches, the full spectrum of labour economics was presented in the numerous parallel sessions of the conference. There were far too many conference papers (about 200) for them all to included in this issue of the IAB topics. To have a selection criteriun, the authors of this paper concentrate on the keynote papers and on contributions of an applied character." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Blien, U., Litzel, N. & Möller, J. (2000): The development of European labour markets. In: IAB Labour Market Research Topics No. 42, p. 1-51.