Documents Morgavi, Hermes 3 results

"Italy's low employment rate is associated with adverse labour market dynamics characterised differently across different categories of people. Both job separation and re-employment have remained less frequent in Italy, especially among older workers, against the backdrop of rigid employment protection legislation which weighs down job creation, thus re-employment prospects. Working conditions after re-employment tend to worsen, especially for older workers, as seniority is not entirely portable across firms. Prospects on working conditions after re-employment deteriorate with longer unemployment spells, affecting incentives to return to work, especially where social benefits are too generous. Rigid employment protection for incumbent workers has also come at the cost of more frequent labour turnover for temporary workers who face an increasing risk of unemployment, including the more highly educated. The risk of hysteresis effects is significant in particular for those who separated from temporary jobs. The public employment service has to take account of individual cases, adopting intensive programmes such as training where necessary, while in general personalised job search assistance to get jobseekers back to work at early stages is recommended."

"Slovenia's living standards measured in GDP per capita are currently some 20% below the EU15 average and have not yet reached their pre-crisis level. Given that most of this gap comes from differences in labour productivity, the paper looks at productivity trends and sources of productivity growth over past two decades. The largest labour productivity lags are in agriculture and mining and utilities, but lags are also present in services sectors such as information and communication activities, financial and insurance activities and professional services. The importance of the high and medium high technology manufacturing has risen in the last two decades, and their share in total manufacturing value added is relatively high in Slovenia. Growth accounting shows that total factor productivity (TFP) and physical capital were the main sources of economic growth before the crisis in Slovenia, while the contribution of human capital was low. With the crisis, however, the GDP growth turned highly negative due to large drops in TFP and the labour input contribution. The contribution from physical capital was also reduced, reflecting subdued investment activity. Slovenia has a high level of state control in the economy and low foreign direct investment (FDI). Using two different panel datasets – one spanning the OECD countries and another spanning Slovenia's economic activities - we find that improving both measures could significantly raise productivity."

"A decomposition of changes to participation rates of 55-to-74 year-olds between 2002 and 2017 based on an estimated equation attributes more than two thirds of the median increase (of 10.9 percentage points) to rising life expectancy and educational attainment. About 1 percentage point is attributable to changes in statutory retirement ages, although part of the reason these effects are not larger is that in most countries, statutory retirement ages have not kept pace with life expectancy. Although difficult to incorporate in the empirical framework, evidence of falling disability pension rolls and reduced sensitivity of old-age participation to the level of unemployment suggests that the tightening of alternative early retirement pathways through unemployment or disability schemes has been a major factor in the turnaround in the participation rate of older workers. Projections indicate that participation rates for 55-to-74 year-olds should keep rising through 2030, by 3.4 percentage points for the median country. Rising life expectancy and educational attainment are projected to make the largest contributions, more than compensating for the negative contribution of population ageing in most countries."