Can Public Sector Wage Bills Be Reduced?

This paper analyzes the relation between public wage bills and public deficits in the OECD countries from 1995 to 2009. The paper shows that fiscal drift episodes, characterized by simultaneous increases in the GDP shares of public wage bills and budget deficits, are more frequent during booms and election years, but not during recessions, except for the 2009 exceptionally strong recession. The emergence of fiscal drift episodes during booms and election years is less frequent in countries with more transparent government, more freedom of the press, as well as in countries with presidential regimes and less union coverage. Inversely, fiscal tightening episodes, characterized by simultaneous decreases in the GDP shares of public wage bills and budget deficits, occur less often during booms than during recessions. The emergence of fiscal tightening episodes during recessions and election years is less frequent in countries with more union coverage.

Bilateral Worker-Firm Training Decisions and an Application to Discrimination.

A large part of group differences in wages comes from unobserved or unverifiable characteristics such as the intensity of human capital investments on-the-job. This is notably the classical argument to account for gender differentials.We build a framework in which training decisions are bilateral, in the presence of frictions in the labor market generated by a flow-matching model. Workers make learning efforts while firm invest by paying direct training costs. Under complementarity of the learning function of these two inputs (effort and direct costs), the outcome of training decisions requires coordination between the firm and the worker.We exhibit cases in which a high investment in training/high effort Nash equilibrium is a dominant strategy, which makes discrimination between groups difficult, and cases in which there is a coordination failure.We define coordination discrimination as a case in which observed characteristics of workers (gender, race, diploma) help to coordinate on an equilibrium.We explore the case of unobservable types of workers, and study under which conditions the (common knowledge) priors of firms do not affect the equilibrium strategies, and under which conditions they play a crucial role instead.

Is Short-Time Work a Good Method to Keep Unemployment Down?

Short-time work compensation aims at reducing lay-offs by allowing employers to temporarily reduce hours worked while compensating workers for the induced loss of income. These programs are now widespread in the OECD countries, notably following the 2008-2009 crisis. This paper discusses the efficiency of this type of policy and investigates its impact on unemployment and employment. There is some evidence that short-time compensation programs stabilize permanent employment and reduce unemployment during downturns. All in all, it seems that short-time work programs used in the recent downturn had significant beneficial effects. This suggests that countries which do not have short-time compensation programs could benefit from their introduction. But short-time compensation programs can also induce inefficient reductions in working hours and reduce the prospects of outsiders if used too intensively. Thus, the design of short-time compensation programs should include an experience-rating component.short-time work, unemployment, employment

The Detaxation of Overtime Hours: Lessons from the French Experiment

In October 2007 France introduced an exemption on the income tax and social security contributions that applied to wages received for hours worked overtime. The goal of the policy was to increase the number of hours worked. This article shows that this reform has had no significant impact on hours worked. Conversely, it has had a positive impact on the overtime hours declared by highly qualified wage-earners, who have opportunities to manipulate the overtime hours they declare in order to optimize their tax situation, since the hours they work are difficult to verify.tax exemption, overtime hours, working time

The detaxation of overtime hours: Lessons from the French experiment

In October 2007 France introduced an exemption on the income tax and social security contributions that applied to wages received for hours worked overtime. The goal of the policy was to increase the number of hours worked. This article shows that this reform has had no significant impact on hours worked. Conversely, it has had a positive impact on the overtime hours declared by highly qualified wage-earners, who have opportunities to manipulate the overtime hours they declare in order to optimize their tax situation, since the hours they work are difficult to verify

Dalla classificazione per i cittadini alla classificazione dei cittadini. Il caso TaggaTO

TaggaTO project aims to empower the citizens' experience within the Turin municipality website http://www.comune.torino.it integrating a standard top- down taxonomy with a bottom-up classification by tags. The top-down taxonomy has been conceived following the UK Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV 2006 - an ISO 2788 fully compliant classification scheme) and empirically refined by usability tests with users and by log files monitoring. The bottom-up classification works as a social tagging system. The latter it is not simply added to the former, but completely integrated to it, in order to obtain a coherent system

Youth Unemployment in France

In France, 17% of youths between the ages of 15 and 29 are not in education, employment or training. Many of them are unemployed or inactive, and are poorly qualified to integrate into the job market. This chapter discusses the main obstacles this group faces, as well as possible remedies. Programmes, vocational training, and support in the search for jobs could be wise long-term investments, but including young people in the minimum income scheme and reducing the cost of work are as important. [Résumé éditeur

Is short-time work a good method to keep unemployment down?

Short-time work compensation aims at reducing lay-offs by allowing employers to temporarily reduce hours worked while compensating workers for the induced loss of income. These programs are now widespread in the OECD countries, notably following the 2008-2009 crisis. This paper discusses the efficiency of this type of policy and investigates its impact on unemployment and employment. There is some evidence that short-time compensation programs stabilize permanent employment and reduce unemployment during downturns. All in all, it seems that short-time work programs used in the recent downturn had significant beneficial effects. This suggests that countries which do not have short-time compensation programs could benefit from their introduction. But short-time compensation programs can also induce inefficient reductions in working hours and reduce the prospects of outsiders if used too intensively. Thus, the design of short-time compensation programs should include an experience-rating component

Bilateral Worker-Firm Training Decisions and an Application to Discrimination

A large part of group differences in wages comes from unobserved or unverifiable characteristics such as the intensity of human capital investments on-the-job. This is notably the classical argument to account for gender differentials.We build a framework in which training decisions are bilateral, in the presence of frictions in the labor market generated by a flow-matching model. Workers make learning efforts while firm invest by paying direct training costs. Under complementarity of the learning function of these two inputs (effort and direct costs), the outcome of training decisions requires coordination between the firm and the worker.We exhibit cases in which a high investment in training/high effort Nash equilibrium is a dominant strategy, which makes discrimination between groups difficult, and cases in which there is a coordination failure.We define coordination discrimination as a case in which observed characteristics of workers (gender, race, diploma) help to coordinate on an equilibrium.We explore the case of unobservable types of workers, and study under which conditions the (common knowledge) priors of firms do not affect the equilibrium strategies, and under which conditions they play a crucial role instead

Bench-to-bedside review: Thrombocytopenia-associated multiple organ failure – a newly appreciated syndrome in the critically ill

New onset thrombocytopenia and multiple organ failure (TAMOF) presages poor outcome in critical illness. Patients who resolve thrombocytopenia by day 14 are more likely to survive than those who do not. Patients with TAMOF have a spectrum of microangiopathic disorders that includes thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and secondary thrombotic microanigiopathy (TMA). Activated protein C is effective in resolving fibrin-mediated thrombosis (DIC); however, daily plasma exchange is the therapy of choice for removing ADAMTS 13 inhibitors and replenishing ADAMTS 13 activity which in turn resolves platelet: von Willebrand Factor mediated thrombosis (TTP/secondary TMA)