Germany’s Willkommenskultur: Trade Unions, Refugees and Labour Market Integration

The Effect of Random Placement on Refugees’ Labour Market Integration

The labour market integration of refugees represents a key challenge for policy makers and has emerged as one of the most divisive topics in public debate. European countries have been pressured to establish fair and transparent methods of placing asylum seekers among the European states and into different regions within their national borders. In this paper, I highlight the unsurprising yet un...

Unions and Labour Market Institutions in Europe

We investigate the evolution of unionisation, considering both economic and institutional factors. While economists typically study the effects of labour market institutions treating unionisation as given and focusing on rent-seeking motivations, in this paper we study how union membership is itself related to the economic environment and, in particular, to labour market institutions. We argue ...

Labour mobility, union immobility? Trade unions & migration in the EU

The paper discusses the interactions between trade unions and migrants in the case of intra-EU migration following the EU enlargement eastwards. Against representations of unions as insiders’ exclusionary organisations, it will point at the rich evidence of cooperation within unions and migrants. In the case of the EU, it is argued, unions have particular incentives to organise migrants rather ...

Trade unions and development

Trade Adjustment Costs and Assistance: the Labour Market Dynamics

To benefit from trade and trade liberalization, economies have to reallocate factors of production within and between sectors. This structural change is the source of gains from trade but brings with it costs of adjustment. Evidence has, for instance, confirmed that some groups of workers tend to face temporary unemployment and lower income when their jobs are lost as a result of international ...