Documents Packard, Truman 3 results

"Today, Europe is a continent of low participation, low employment labor markets. Many observers would like to blame poor employment outcomes on the Euro or on austerity. But these are dangerous distractions from real problems that constitute imperatives for structural reform. There are differences across countries, but there is a "European model" of work: almost every European economy has more stringent employment protection and more generous social benefits than peers in North America, Oceania, and East Asia. This has led to low labor force participation and high unemployment, especially among young Europeans. Layered on top of these weak labor markets is the rapid onset of aging; if policies are not changed, Europe will lose about a million workers every year for the next five decades, especially in the 2030s. In short, Europe has to increase both the demand for and supply of labor. To do so, Europeans have to begin viewing competition as a necessary good, not an unnecessary evil. Restructuring unemployment and pension benefits will help to increase participation and reverse the decline of the workforce, but policies that promote competition for jobs and mobility of job-seekers are needed to increase the demand for labor. To get to full employment, Europe has to alter the employment protection laws that give too much power to those with jobs while marginalizing others to the fringes of the economy. Europeans will have to reduce and restructure the generous social benefits that simultaneously discourage young people from searching seriously for work and encourage older workers to quit work too early. Europeans will have to view mobility of workers as a prerequisite of European integration, not just a possible consequence of it. If all this is augmented by reforms to reduce public debt, encourage enterprise and innovation, and stabilize finance, Europe will have a vibrant economy, with high participation and full employment."

"In the past decade, many Latin American governments have radically restructured their old age income security systems, following the lead of Chile, which undertook its major pension reform in 1981. The defining characteristic of the reforms has been a shift in the basis of public pensions from social to individual responsibility: instead of the widely used system that "collectivized" or pooled the risk of being without the capacity to earn while aged, numerous countries in the region have adopted a system that relies on individual savings accounts. The reforms have maintained a role for a modified version of public pooling; this combination of individual and social savings to finance pensions is known as the "multipillar" approach. This article is based on a report prepared for the Office of the Chief Economist of the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank (Gill, Packard and Yermo, 2004).1 The report recognizes that the system of individual accounts, the essential aspect of the reform, has been a necessary and positive development, and one that is consistent with the economics of insurance and social welfare objectives. Beyond this recognition, however, the results of reform are much more complex. Each country has implemented its own version of the multipillar system. The article therefore draws on country evidence in order to determine: How has the new approach to public pensions in Latin America fared? In particular, have the changes left workers and their families in reform countries better off? The first section provides a brief description of the reforms. The second discusses the main macroeconomic concerns and effects. The third describes the impact on coverage levels, and other social welfare implications. The fourth evaluates the stagnation of coverage levels and presents various possible explanations. The fifth makes specific proposals to improve the multipillar pension system in Latin America. The last section concludes."

"This paper exploits variation in country-level indicators drawn from published data to analyze the relationship between labor regulation and the use of digital technology. The analysis shows a statistically and economically significant association between digital technology use by firms and a country's statutory minimum wage and employment protection regulations. The results are robust to the inclusion of controls for level of development, economic stability, available infrastructure, and trade openness. To ensure the broadest country coverage, the paper develops new indexes of employment protection, using the World Bank's Doing Business indicators, which allow several aspects of labor market regulation—such as restrictions on hours and hiring, dismissal procedures, and severance costs--to be analyzed separately. "