Documents structural adjustment 97 results

"Cet article a pour objet de mettre au jour les processus d'ajustement des établissements face à la crise, les caractériser et, conjointement, analyser la manière dont ils ont été discutés, négociés ou au contraire imposés par les directions. Sur le plan méthodologique, il s'appuie sur 15 monographies d'établissements réalisées dans le cadre des post-enquêtes à l'enquête Relations professionnelles et négociations d'entreprises (REPONSE) 2010-2011. Il montre que les établissements ne subissent pas une crise mais des crises : la dégradation de la conjoncture économique n'est pas la seule cause aux ajustements observés, même si elle peut servir de justification. Il rend également compte de la pluralité des ajustements, de leur séquençage et de leur polarisation. Entre négociation défensive et concession, la crise apparaît comme un contexte propice à imposer des compromis aux salariés."

"Most of Southern Europe is only gradually emerging from the devastating effects of the eurozone crisis, with unemployment receding only gradually and a country as big as Italy seemingly stuck in a growth rate below one per cent even as risk premia have fallen dramatically. But Europe is more than a collection of special cases. There is a broader trend, which affects all countries: growth is falling and certainly falling far short of expectations. The recipe almost universally recommended is "structural reforms". But this is a recipe that has been tried intensively in recent decades, and it has failed."

"Adjustment to an external imbalance is more difficult within a monetary union if wages are sticky. Periods of high unemployment are usually necessary to achieve the required real depreciation (internal devaluation). Gradual adjustment is usually recommended to distribute the output and employment cost over time. This paper takes into account that gradual adjustment also has a cost in terms of higher current account deficits and thus a higher debt, and ultimately higher debt-service costs. We calculate the optimal path/speed of price and wage adjustment in terms of deeper parameters like the slope of the Phillips curve, the degree of openness, etc. Gradual adjustment is not always optimal."

"Has there been a transformation of public service employment relations in Europe since the crisis? Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe examines public service employment relations after the economic crisis, including analysis of more than thirty years of public service and workforce reform, and addresses the interplay between an emerging post-crisis public service sector and the consequences for the state, employers and trade unions in core public services. Written by leading national experts, this book places the economic crisis in a longer timeframe and examines how far trends in public sector employment relations were reinforced or reversed by the crisis. It provides an up-to-date analysis of the restructuring of public service employment relations in 12 major European countries, including analysis of little studied central and Eastern European countries. This book will be vital reading for researchers, academics and PhD Students in the fields of Public Management, Public Administration, Employment Relations, and Human Resource Management."

"1. Is Europe losing its soul? The European social model in times of crisis / Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead -- 2. The Baltic States: convergence with the European social model or further liberalisation? / Jaan Masso and Kerly Krillo -- 3. France's social model: between resilience and erosion / Je?ro?me Gautie? -- 4. The German welfare state: from an inclusive to an exclusive Bismarckian model / Gerhard Bosh -- 5. The Greek social model: towards a deregulated labour market and residual social protection / Maria Karamessini -- 6. Recent changes moving Hungary away from the European social model / A?gota Scharle and Dorottya Szikra -- 7. Italy: continuity and change in welfare state retrenchment / Annamaria Simonazzi -- 8. The European social model in a context of crisis and austerity in Portugal / Pilar Gonza?lez and Anto?nio Figueiredo -- 9. Turning back before arriving: the dismantling of the Spanish welfare state / Rafael Mun?oz de Bustillo and Jose?-Ignacio Anto?n -- 10. The Swedish social model: resilience and success in turbulent times / Dominique Anxo -- 11. Britain's social model: rapid descent from "liberal collectivism" to a "market society" / Damian Grimshaw."

"This paper reviews the main issues related to the short-term impact of structural reforms in different macroeconomic contexts and takes stock of existing theoretical and empirical studies. Taking reforms introduced in "normal" times as a benchmark, it reviews the available evidence on the impact of reforms that are implemented in "bad" times - i.e. in the presence of a sizeable negative output gap and persistently weak demand - as well as under different assumptions regarding the availability or effectiveness of macroeconomic policies in supporting the reforms. In doing so the paper focuses on the key channels through which different reforms influence short-term activity via the main components of demand and discusses how these channels operate under different macro conditions. Overall, the evidence suggests that in a context of weak demand, structural reform strategies will have significantly better chances of being successful if they put more weight on measures that in addition to stimulate employment or productivity in the medium term can best support demand in the short term."

"This paper examines current account developments in different country groups amongst the lower- and medium-income European economies (LMIEs) both prior to the crisis and following it. The Baltic countries, the Western Balkan as well as the Southern EU countries (Greece, Portugal and Spain) showed rather dramatic deteriorations in their current accounts prior to the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008/2009, while in the Central and Eastern European countries current account deficits never exploded. What drove current account developments before the crisis and have external imbalances been sustainably corrected? We investigate whether and to which extent adjustments took place in terms of trade performance, real effective exchange rates and components of unit labour costs. Finally, we look at developments of the tradable and non-tradable sectors of the economy and find that ‘structural' current account problems are grounded in persistent weaknesses of the tradable sector. As such, policy implications would entail that countries which suffer from longer-term ‘structural' external imbalances have to strongly focus their policy attention on a recovery of the tradable sector."

"Optimal currency area (OCA) theory has been influential in pushing eurozone countries towards structural reforms to make product and labour markets more flexible. The underlying assumption of the OCA prescription for structural reform is that asymmetric shocks are permanent. However, when shocks are temporary it does not follow that more flexibility is the answer. When shocks are the result of business-cycle movements, the way to deal with them is by stabilisation efforts. This paper provides empirical evidence that suggests that the biggest shocks in the eurozone were the result of business-cycle movements. These were relatively well synchronised, except for their amplitude. We argue that efforts to stabilise business cycles should be strengthened relative to the efforts that have been made to impose structural reforms, with consideration given to the implications for the governance of the eurozone."

"This paper provides empirical evidence in support of the view that the quality of institutions is an important determinant of long-term growth of European countries. When also taking into account the initial level of GDP per capita and government debt, cross-country institutional differences can explain to a great extent the relative long-term GDP performance of European countries. It also shows that an initial government debt level above a threshold (e.g. 60-70%) coupled with institutional quality below the EU average tends to be associated with particularly poor long-term real growth performance. Interestingly, the detrimental effect of high debt levels on long-term growth seems cushioned by the presence of very sound institutions. This might be because good institutions help to alleviate the debt problem in various ways, e.g. by ensuring sufficient fiscal consolidation in the longer-run, allowing for better use of government expenditures and promoting sustainable growth, social fairness and more efficient tax administration. The quality of national institutions seems to enhance the long-term GDP performance across a large sample of countries, also including OECD countries outside Europe. The paper offers some evidence that, in the presence of good institutions, conditions for catching-up seem generally good also for euro-area and fixed exchange rate countries. Looking at sub-groupings, it seems that sound institutions may be particularly important for long-term growth in the countries where the exchange rate tool is no longer available (and where also sovereign debt is high), and less so in the countries with flexible exchange rate regimes. However, this result is preliminary and requires further research.

The empirical findings on the importance of institutions are robust to various measures of output growth, different measures of institutional indicators, different sample sizes, different country groupings and to the inclusion of additional control variables. Overall, the results tend to support the call for structural reforms in general and reforms enhancing the efficiency of public administration and regulation, the rule of law and the fight against rent-seeking and corruption in particular.
All three authors are at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt."