1. Making Labor Market Reforms Work for Everyone: Lessons from Germany
- Author:
- Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
- Publication Date:
- 01-2014
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- Mark Twain once wrote an essay about the difficulties of learning what he called "The Awful German Language." Similar barriers to comprehension seem to plague those trying to explain recent German economic performance. By most measures, Germany has the best functioning labor market among large economies in the West, with levels of employment reaching those in the United States at the end of the turbo-charged 1990s. A debate has stirred, however, about whether this success has come with a price—specifically, whether Germany's domestic structural reforms have lowered living standards for Germany's low income workers and worsened income inequality and whether Germany is fortuitously and perhaps selfishly riding a wave of strong foreign demand for German exports.
- Topic:
- Economics, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Germany