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Market Flexibility (market + flexibility)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting66%
Humanities and Social Sciences33%

Selected Abstracts

Labour market implications of EU product market integration

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 30 2000
Torben M. Andersen
European labour markets are in a state of flux due to the changing market situation induced by international integration. This process affects wage formation through more fierce product market competition and increased mobility of jobs. This development is by some observers taken to enforce labour market flexibility, while for others it signals an erosion of social standards and in turn possibly the welfare society. Since labour is not very mobile in Europe, the effects of international integration on labour markets are mostly indirect via product market integration. We review the channels through which product market integration affects labour markets and perform an empirical analysis of the convergence and interdependencies in wage formation among EU countries. We find that integration is changing labour market structures and inducing wage convergences as well as stronger wage interdependencies, but it is a gradual process. Moreover, the present study does not support the view that international integration will lead to a ,race to the bottom' and rapidly erode domestic labour markets standards, nor that it will relieve politicians of the need to consider labour market reforms to improve labour market performance. [source]

Social Changes and Welfare Reform in South Korea: In the Context of the Late-coming Welfare State

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009
Sung-won Kim
Abstract The Korean welfare state is facing diverse pressures and challenges due to changing economic, social, and demographic circumstances: prevalence of the service economy, labor market flexibility, weakened family function and increase of untraditional families, lowest fertility rate and the most rapid ageing of the population among OECD countries, and so forth. These challenges, which indicate new types of social risks, have been stimulating a series of discussions on welfare reform in Korea. The old social risks such as retirement, ill health, poverty, and unemployment have not disappeared because of insecure or inadequate welfare, and now these risks are even intertwined with the so-called new social risks. Thereby the Korean welfare state is facing complicated reform tasks. This study attempts to analyze the structure and context of these challenges in Korea, and to explore the various driving forces that have formulated Korean welfare reform in recent decades. Through the above analyses, this study will shed light the characteristics of welfare reform in Korea as a late-coming welfare state. [source]

The Argentine welfare state: enduring and resisting change

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 1 2010
Ernesto Aldo Isuani
Isuani EA. The Argentine welfare state: enduring and resisting change Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 104,114 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. It is widely accepted that during the 1990s, the Argentine state experienced a general retrenchment. This article shows that, though this may have been true in the economic realm, this retrenchment did not take place in the diverse arenas of social policy. While privatisations and labour market flexibility dismantled the foundations of Keynesianism, the components of the welfare state experienced substantial growth. At the same time, the changes experienced by the welfare state in the past quarter century have not included a transformation of its basic principles, despite the profound changes experienced by Argentine society during this period. [source]

Has oil lost the capacity to shock?

OXONOMICS, Issue 1 2006
David Walton
Recent high oil prices have neither triggered a recession nor caused inflation. This is in contrast to the ,stagflation' of the 1970s. The dissimilarity can be explained by increased labour market flexibility, central bank independence and the role of monetary policy. [source]

Monetary integration in the ex-Soviet Union: A ,union of four'?*

THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 1 2006
Vladimir Chaplygin
F02; F15; E58 Abstract The governments of four ex-Soviet countries recently discussed forming a currency union. To examine the economic feasibility of this proposition, we use conventional techniques and show that the arrangement is likely to find it difficult to handle the lack of structural symmetry, the asymmetric pattern of shocks, and the lack of market flexibility among the potential participants. Moreover, the union would be a unilateral one. It would require an unusual degree of political commitment to survive. Nonetheless, there are some subtleties in the timing and pattern of mutual dependence between Russia and Kazakhstan, and to a lesser extent in Belarus, which may reduce the strain from a currency union in those countries. Otherwise, the black market will have to provide the necessary market flexibility. [source]