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The False Panacea of Labor-Market Flexibility

A preliminary comparison between Europe’s largest economy, Germany, and the US suggests that the former is better equipped to hold its own in the age of globalization. And Germany's highly regulated labor market may be partly to thank for that.

AMSTERDAM – Competitiveness has become one of the economic buzzwords of our time. Barack Obama trumpeted it during his State of the Union address in January, and European leaders from the Tory David Cameron in Britain to the Socialist José Luis Zapatero in Spain to Japan’s new Minister of Economics Kaoru Yosano have embraced it as a priority. But what sort of competitiveness do they have in mind?

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