The basic aim of this thesis is to study the impact that educational level and vocational training programmes (mainly funded by the European Community Support Frameworks) had on the labour market of peripheral EU countries, using Greece as a case study. In particular, the thesis focuses on the Greek regions of Attica and Central Macedonia, as well as Greece as a whole, during the period 1988-2000. It investigates econometrically whether the training courses in these two regions were compatible with the skill needs and thus, helped the trainees to increase their chances of finding a job, as well as to what extent there were skill mismatches between education-training programmes and the labour market. Attica and Central Macedonia were chosen because they are the largest regions in Greece in terms of population, and the two biggest urban centres in the country (Athens and Thessaloniki) are situated in the regions under study. So, in effect, the thesis investigates half of the Greek population and compares it econometrically with the rest of Greece. This investigation was undertaken using Labour Force Survey (LFS) micro-level data that became available in Greece in 2005. As all training actions in the country are co-financed by EU funds, the thesis also probes the outcomes of these funds during the period of the Community Support Framework - CSF-1 (1989-93) and CSF-2 (1994-99) in the domain of training. My analysis at the micro-level indicates that this training “revolution” was not accompanied by any real improvement in matching supply with demand or increasing people’s chances of finding a job. The study moves beyond the micro-level and embeds the empirical findings within the institutional/organizational environment of Greek vocational training (meso-level) and the broader political economy of Greece and its position in the EU political economy (macro-level). This is so as to provide a comprehensive explanation of what empirically is identified as the minimal impact of these policies. That is, the thesis goes further than the often narrow micro-economic explanations of the impact of training upon labour markets in that it explores the wider politico-economic context of these policies and assesses its impact on their effectiveness. Consequently, the findings are of relevance beyond the Greek case as they are also useful for comparative research pertaining to European regions or countries. The results of the thesis challenge the usefulness of the active labour market policies (ALMPs) alone. Training mechanisms, concrete political economy and inadequate public administration were the main obstacles to the matching process. This does not mean that training and ALMPs are not needed in Greece, but they can only function effectively in the presence of a suitable institutional framework, which has yet to become a reality.

Macroeconomic volatility effect on labour market performance has been detected for OECD countries during the years of 1985-2011. Current research adds a number of improvements to the subject field. Labour market performance incorporates a large number of associative indicators rather than simple unemployment rate. Variety of performance indicators has been used in attempt to underpin the system mechanism. Advanced techniques are used for volatility estimation. Distinct volatility measures are used for exchange rate, inflation and interest rate series according to their stochastic properties. For long memory inflation series ARFIMA-GARCH models have been used, for interest rates that bare asymmetry due to Central Bank and market interventions QARCH, GJR-GARCH and PARCH models have been fitted. Exchange rate series have been modelled using ARIMA-GARCH and EGARCH. In estimation of volatility effect on labour market performance either random or fixed effects models have been used. Standard errors of the models have been tested and corrected for serial correlation, heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence. For the robustness of the results panel time series methods have been used where possible due to its advantages for macroeconomics models (Eberhardt (2012)). Where use of these methods has been restricted by the nature of the models, Arellano-Bond (1991) and Bruno (2005) models have been fit. Hybrid (Allison (2009)) and Correlated Random effects models (Mundalak (1978)) have been used where categorical variables have been included in the regression.

One of the common debates in the European Union revolves around the argument that labour mobility in the EU is too low and well below the general expectations. Since the implementation of neoliberal policies in the 1980s, the EU has increasingly favoured ‘high labour mobility levels within the EU’ and has desperately been trying to increase them ever since. In particular, in the last decade the EU has implemented various programmes in order to boost labour mobility between the member states. This thesis challenges the current view of EU institutions with their call for higher mobility levels between the EU member states. According to migration theories (the neoclassical theory of migration), individuals move in order to profit from economic advantages, i.e. they move to regions with better prospects of earning higher wages. In other words, under this lens migration takes places between economically different regions. In addition, the EU has been trying to achieve convergence between the regions by implementing cohesion polices, which means the reduction of economic disparities between regions. Through semi-structured interviews, the motivations of EU-migrants between converged and non-converged regions are explored and compared. The outcomes of this research study bring into question the perspective of the EU institutions by providing evidence that high mobility levels cannot be achieved in converged regions as both ambitions correlate from the same source, namely wage differentials. The EU is thus following paradoxical aims.

The main objective of this thesis is to improve the international comparisons of labour statistics, and to better serve labour market information system at inal and international levels. We addressed the issue of how to [me employment and unemployment and the classification of the working age population into various labour force states in both developed and developing countries. We examined the relevance of the international labour comparisons based on the standard ILO definition and classification across labour markets with different development stages, and the value of oyment definition as a measure of labour availabihty.

Although structural transformation has always been recognized as a distinctive feature of development, there has been less effort in the literature to qualify and quantify the two-way interaction with labour markets. The thesis contributes to this task by proposing three different small-scale general equilibrium models of structural change with a detailed specification of the labour market, and calibrates them to the Spanish postwar experience. The first chapter proposes a dual-sector Solow-type model where labour reallocation interacts with the presence of involuntary unemployment in non-agriculture, as a consequence of efficiency wages considerations. The urban sector features also increasing returns to scale, and the model is used to quantify the role played by externalities on aggregate TFP growth. Furthermore, the model has been calibrated under alternative assumptions on the degree of openness, and job separation rates. Results suggest increasing returns matters most in the last three decades of the century and the performance of the model significantly improves under the closed economy assumption. In the second chapter, the role of sectoral TFPs as main drivers of structural change is investigated. In this case, involuntary unemployment arises from matching frictions in the urban sector. This specification of the labour market allows a more precise calibration to the actual Spanish experience, providing ways to account also for the transition from dictatorship to democracy of the late 1970s. Various counterfactual simulations lead us to conclude towards a greater importance of productivity improvements in agriculture, while changes in labour market institutions deploy their effects mainly within the labour market itself, but have only a modest effect on the pattern of structural change. Finally, in the third chapter we endogenize the saving rate, introduce taxes and consider home production and worker heterogeneity within agriculture.

Abstract Since the late 1990s, internal changes and external challenges have disrupted the balance between labour demand and labour supply and led to the growth of unemployment in Taiwan. Thus, the unemployment rate increased 174% and the long-term unemployment rate increased almost 663% during the period from 1991 to 2008. Unemployment has occurred among not only unskilled workers or disadvantaged minorities, but also among some parts of the middle class or skilled workers with middle or above educational attainment. In order to combat unemployment, policy change occurred in the late 1990s. The target groups were middle-aged populations, women, youths, aborigines, disabled people, and insiders on unpaid leave. The main emphases in Taiwanese activation schemes included incentive reinforcement, employment assistance, job creation, and human capital investment. This study focuses on the process of developing and formulating activation policies and seeks to understand why and how activation policies emerged in Taiwan. The methods here consist of: (1) documentary analysis of media sources, research reports, official publications, and legislative proceedings focusing upon issues related to unemployment, and (2) semi-structured interviews with 45 key informants in the in the policy process. This thesis concludes that the economic and social context, institutional constraints, bureaucratic practices, and dominant ideologies in the Taiwanese welfare regime played a decisive role in the process of shaping labour market policies. In addition, the findings reflects the reorientation of policy in Taiwan towards welfare reform, including an increasing role for the state in welfare provision, increased attention to social and community needs, the promotion of corporate social responsibility, and an increased emphasis upon the avoidance of 'welfare dependency', the maintenance of traditional family norms, and investments in human and social capital.

The first two substantive chapters of the thesis estimate the effect of single sex secondary school education on educational achievement and labour market out- comes. The last chapter evaluates the impact of a tax credit aimed to encourage disabled people to work. The analysis is carried out using data from the UK and particular attention is paid to issues of endogeneity. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the association between single sex education and indi- viduals' achievement at school and in the labour market, respectively using data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS). The main findings from Chapter 2 suggest, after accounting for endogeneity, that single sex schooling increases the probability of continuing with education at the age of 16 by 14 percentage points (ppts). However, no effect was found for other educational outcomes. The analysis in Chapter 3 suggests the existence of a positive relationship with fulltime employment at the age of 33, and a positive effect on individuals' wages among those working fulltime at the age of 23. The quantile regression analysis suggested that the effect is mainly observed at the lower-middle part of the wage distribution. Finally, we found evidence that women from single sex schools are more likely to have a professional partner. In Chapter 4, using data from the UK Labour Force Survey, we evaluate the effectiveness of the Disabled Person's Tax Credit (DPTC). Using a difference in differences approach, we find an increase of 6.5 ppts in the employment rates of lone mothers with a disability and an increase of 5 ppts in the looking for a job probability of single men. This thesis contributes to the existing literature on the effects of single sex education by using a different identification strategy from other authors. It also provides evidence of the effectiveness of the DPTC, which has not been studied in a comprehensive way until now.

This paper analyzes labor market frictions caused by heterogeneity among traders on the demand side (firms). Vacancy numbers per firm created at once can vary, and this heterogeneity affects the application probability of workers through the wage settings of firms, which determines the overall matching efficiency. I formulate a matching function that reflects vacancy concentration level in its efficiency parameter, and verify that concentration improves matching efficiency when its level is not so high, and such positive impacts can peak at an intermediate concentration level for the period of 1996-2005 in the Japanese regional labor markets (Chapter 1). In the following chapters, I examine whether this result fits the theoretical prediction. For this aim, I present a directed search model in which vacancy distribution among firms is asymmetric, in order to investigate matching efficiency and equilibrium wage levels. In Chapter 2, the model considers a monopsony market with two firms that have multiple vacancies each, while in Chapter 3 I extend the model to allow wage competition among more than two firms, using the framework of a dominant firm and competitive fringe firms. The models indicate that the derived equilibrium is generally not constrained efficient, and that matching efficiency can deteriorate with concentration, depending on the concentration level and worker-vacancy ratio. These results are consistent with my empirical findings of regional labor markets in Chapter 1. In the model of Chapter 3, the gap between the maximized output level in an efficient market and the level of the equilibrium is minimized in the case of intermediate concentration. Further, positive wage differentials are usually not obtained, but are obtained under certain market parameters.

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This thesis investigates the effects of ‘atypical’ forms of employment, induced by labour market flexibility, on <i>employee well-being</i>. The empirical analysis uses subjective job satisfaction information included in large household panel surveys (BHPS, ECHP) and in an original cross-section sample of low-skilled workers in Europe (EPICURUS). Apart from assisting in the establishment of consensus regarding the impact of various determinants of job satisfaction, it also extends the conventional specification by incorporating several “new” explanatory variables in the model, such as part-time work, measures of working conditions, as well as incentive pay. In this manner it proves that the ultimate effect of unstable working arrangements on job satisfaction depends on the extent to which individuals who work in these do so by choice rather than compulsion. Furthermore, it empirically verifies that one of the most significant non-pecuniary ‘costs’ of inferior working conditions is reduced employee motivation and job satisfaction. The thesis also casts doubt on non-economic arguments claiming that the provision of incentive pay is detrimental to job security and to the intrinsic satisfaction that workers derive from their jobs. An important asymmetry is moreover uncovered in the manner in which individual and gain-sharing incentives affect the overall utility of employees, as only the latter are found to have a positive effect. A major novelty of this thesis is that it utilizes a new technique for measuring employee preferences, namely the so-called <i>conjoint analysis method</i>. This approach enables the detection of the <i>ex ante </i>preferences of workers over a given number of attributes that are typical of most jobs, prior any psychological adaptation phenomena coming into play. Insights for policymakers are derived that are expected to inform the design of a more socially cohesive welfare policy.