Documents Bouget, Denis 21 results

"La 18e édition du Bilan social de l'Union européenne fait état des politiques sociales menées aux niveaux européen et national. L'ouvrage présente les contributions d'éminents universitaires qui analysent les tentatives pour sortir des multiples crises ayant frappé l'UE depuis 2008. Les énormes défis auxquels l'UE a été confrontée en 2016 ont mis sa survie en péril. Malgré certains progrès, la gouvernance socio-économique de l'UE ne répond toujours pas de manière équilibrée aux défis macroéconomiques, budgétaires et sociaux.

Ce livre comporte deux parties. La première aborde la politique de "haut niveau" en 2016, en allant au-delà du cadre de la politique sociale stricto sensu. On y trouve les analyses des déterminants du Brexit sur le marché du travail, les réponses de l'UE à la crise des réfugiés et la consultation publique qui a précédé la publication du Socle européen des droits sociaux. La deuxième partie traite des politiques "au jour le jour" dans certains domaines de la politique sociale au cours de l'année écoulée. Notamment, les récents développements du semestre européen, l'état du dialogue social sectoriel de l'UE, les soins de santé, l'équilibre entre vie professionnelle et vie privée et les politiques de vieillissement actif."

"This book develops a new approach for estimating the way in which labour costs reflect cost competitiveness. Conventionally, unit labour costs (a standard measure of cost competitiveness) are calculated as indices, without regard to the relative levels of wage costs. To remedy this, the authors develop the concept of the ‘equilibrium wage', which corresponds to the level of wages when the returns on capital in different regions and sectors are equalised. A wage competitiveness indicator is thus calculated as the ratio of actual to equilibrium wages.



The book presents empirical evidence of equilibrium and actual wage developments for country aggregates and for economic sectors. Within the euro area, five countries are above equilibrium levels, three (including Germany) are close to equilibrium, and eleven member states (mainly in central and eastern Europe) have massively undervalued wages. The data for sectoral competitiveness seem to reflect in part sectoral specialisation, but the picture varies between sectors, countries and time periods."

"The analyses of the national reforms in the welfare states over the last decades were partly focused on this notion of convergence. In the eighties and the nineties, the transformation in many welfare states provided a literature on the retrenchment of the welfare states which explained the trends as a bottom race or a downward convergence. The economic literature has provided a large range of measurements of convergence in per capita GDP between countries. These indicators have mainly been based on the deviation measurement, the differences between growth rates, or the changes in the ranks of countries). The analyses on the convergence/divergence in the social welfare states often used the same indicators as in economic studies.
In this exploratory paper we would like to re-think the measurement of convergence on the basis of attractiveness between pairs of countries because many national reforms have been inspired by the existence of specific policies in some leading countries which became 'models' for the other ones.
This paper proposes a methodology for distinguishing the countries which are attracted by some other ones, from the countries which are attractors (models). The first results on OECD data partly contradict the idea of a downward convergence of the social welfare states in the eighties and the nineties."

"Economic and labour market transformations in Europe have led to an increase in non-standard work and new forms of self-employment as well as an upsurge in transitions from one labour market status to another — with great variations between countries, sectors, age groups and gender. In this context, European social protection systems are facing growing challenges in covering social risks for these workers.

This Synthesis Report produced by the core team of the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) describes the social and labour market situation of the self-employed and non-standard workers in 35 European countries. It also analyses their statutory and effective access to the main social protection schemes, and identifies recent national reforms aimed at extending their social protection."