A theoretical rationale for flexicurity policies based on education

Thomas Davoine

No 311, Economics Series from Institute for Advanced Studies

Abstract: The paper provides a theoretical rationale for flexicurity policies, which consist of low employment protection, generous unemployment insurance and active labor market programmes. It analyzes in which conditions flexicurity can be optimal. Low employment protection encourages costly education efforts to access high productivity and high innovation sectors, with firms more likely to survive and thus not exposing much their workers to unemployment risk. Activation programmes support the reallocation flow from unproductive to productive firms, helping to reduce unemployment. Low employment protection thus provides incentives for costly self-insurance against unemployment risk through education, mitigating the moral hazard cost of unemployment insurance and activation programmes. The paper provides realistic numerical illustrations where flexicurity is optimal, and where it is not optimal.

Keywords: flexicurity; unemployment insurance; job protection; active labor market policy; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H30 J32 J64 J65 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/3222 First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ihs:ihsesp:311

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Institute for Advanced Studies - Library, Josefstädterstr. 39, A-1080 Vienna, Austria

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Series from Institute for Advanced Studies Josefstädterstr. 39, A-1080 Vienna, Austria. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Doris Szoncsitz ().