 Labour Markets and Flexibility in the 1990s: The Europe-USA opposition revisitedFrancesca Bettio and Samuel Rosenberg International Review of Applied Economics, 1999, vol. 13, issue 3, 269-279 Abstract: Economists' contest on labour market flexibility has quickly pivoted around the stylised trade off between more flexibility and growth on the one hand and increased inequality of income on the other, the welfare implications of this trade off being too often assumed rather than verified. This article uses the essays collected in the Special Issue on Labour Markets and Flexibility in the 1990s of the International Review of Applied Economics to challenge the terms of this trade off as well as the related welfare assumptions. Some of the most popular tenets in the literature are assessed in the light of the evidence and the arguments put forward by the authors contributing to the Special Issue, in particular, the notion that the European labour market is rigid, the contention that more flexibility is imposed by international competition, or that labour market regulation weakens both employment and output growth, the belief that the main welfare cost of flexibility is increased inequality of earnings or the fear that flexibility may be primarily 'female'. Date: 1999 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:irapec:v:13:y:1999:i:3:p:269-279 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article International Review of Applied Economics is currently edited by Professor Malcolm Sawyer More articles in International Review of Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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