The Severance Pay Reform in Austria ("Abfertigung neu")

Abfindung, Reform, Betriebliche Sozialleistungen, Österreich, Redundancy pay, Reform, Fringe benefits, Austria

On the Weinstein conjecture in higher dimensions

The existence of a "Plastikstufe" for a contact structure implies the Weinstein conjecture for all supporting contact forms.Comment: 5 page

Employment and Wage Adjustment in Euroland's Labour Market

The paper attempts to establish a few stylised facts about Euroland's labour market given the increasing importance of smoothly functioning markets in the EMU. We assemble econometric evidence regarding labour demand behaviour, wage-setting mechanisms and the cyclicality of unemployment in Euroland. We find that in the 1990s unemployment cyclicality has been higher in Euroland than in the US, while the opposite was true in the previous two decades. The main reason for this is to be found in Euroland's employment now responding much stronger to cyclical fluctuations in output than in the past, and even somewhat stronger than in the US. Thus, it appears rather implausible that overall too strict employment protection regulations can still offer a convincing explanation for a significant part of Euroland's problem of persistently high unemployment. There can be little doubt, however, that wage bargaining in Euroland continues to suffer from a serious insider-outsider problem.Unemployment, Wage-setting mechanisms, European Monetary Union

Wage and Mobility Effects of Trade and Migration on the Austrian Labour Market

This study analyses the effect of trade and migration on wages and labour market mobility. We estimate wage growth equations and a multinomial logit mobility equation on an individual data set for 1991 to 1994. We find substantial differences in the reactions of white and blue-collar workers wages and mobility to trade and migration. In Austria exports have a positive and imports a negative impact on wage growth only for blue-collar workers. Migrants also reduce only blue-collar workers wage growth. Our results indicate that higher imports and an inflow of migrants reduce sectoral mobility of all types of workers. The risk of being out of work by contrast is increased by migration and imports for only blue-collar workers, but reduced by exports for all types of workers. In general, our results suggest enlargement of the EU would have only small effects on the Austrian labour market.Wages, Migration, Trade

Computer Use and the Wage Structure in Austria

In this paper we examine the relationship between computer premium and job position in Austria. We estimate cross-section wage equations and control for selectivity of computer use via a treatment effects model. We find that the size of the wage effect attributed to computer use varies significantly between job hierarchies. Persons in higher positions receive relatively lower rewards for computer use than workers at lower hierarchy levels. Overall we find that computerisation increased wage inequality in Austria. However, hierarchy-related differences in the relative computer premium in Austria might moderate the effects of computer use on the wage distribution.Technological change, Computer wage premium, Wage inequality

Sc-Smoothness, Retractions and New Models for Smooth Spaces

We survey a (nonlinear) Fredholm theory for a new class of ambient spaces called polyfolds, and develop the analytical foundations for some of the applications of the theory. The basic feature of these new spaces, which can be finite and infinite dimensional, is that in general they may have locally varying dimensions. These new spaces are needed for a functional analytic treatment of nonlinear problems involving analytic limiting behavior like bubbling-off. The theory is applicable to Gromov-Witten and Floer Theory as well as Symplectic Field Theory.Comment: 178 pages, 8 figure

The Weinstein Conjecture for Planar Contact Structures in Dimension Three

In this paper we describe a general strategy for approaching the Weinstein conjecture in dimension three. We apply this approach to prove the Weinstein conjecture for a new class of contact manifolds (planar contact manifolds). We also discuss how the present approach reduces the general Weinstein conjecture in dimension three to a compactness problem for the solution set of a first order elliptic PDE.Comment: 19 pages, corrected some typo