No. 19

Broersma, Lourens (2008), Productivity-Participation Trade-Off: Europe versus Anglo-Saxon countries, (January 2008)

This paper has established the existence of a trade-off between productivity and participation. This is however only short-term phenomena and vanishes in 3 to 5 years. Furthermore, we found that for the period 1970-1995 time patterns in the trade-off are similar between Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries (read: USA). However, after 1995, the time patterns have become highly different, as there continues to be a trade-of in the US, but no longer in Europe. The main reason for this is the difference in skill composition of the newly hired workers compared to the existing workforce. In Europe the surge in part-time labour of entering females added to this problem.