Maria Karamessini

Still a Distinctive Southern European Employment Model

Current similarities among the four southern European EU Member States—Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain—with respect not only to labour market characteristics but also to the institutional arrangements that influence labour supply, utilisation and demand corroborate the concept of a distinctive southern European employment model. Its origins go back to common features in the pattern of socio-economic development and the political history of these countries. In the past 20 years or so, national differences in the pace and content of institutional change have increased diversity within the model and eroded some of its components. They have not, however, destroyed its unity and distinctiveness.

Wage determination and the gender pay gap: A feminist political economy analysis and decomposition

Abstract This paper develops a heterodox analytical framework of wage determination and a new method of decomposition of the gender pay gap drawing on Marxian and feminist theories. The proposed framework utilizes two wage equations for the analysis of the gender gap: the first equation refers to average occupational wages and the second to individual wages as deviations from occupational wages. Using a data set for wages from industries in Greece, this paper demonstrates and explains differences in results between this proposed decomposition of the gender pay gap and that of Oaxaca-Blinder, and discusses the merits of this new technique compared to the Brown-Moon-Zoloth method. The authors argue that the main advantage of this proposed method of decomposition over the other two methods is that the proposed method allows for separate estimates of the impact of social and individual gender wage discrimination on the gender pay gap.

From a State-Led Familistic to a Liberal, Partly De-familialized Capitalism: The Difficult Transition of the Greek Model

This chapter examines the transformation of the Greek socio-economic model since the beginning of the 1990s, analyses the main drivers for change and evaluates its success/shortcomings in achieving high job growth rates, job quality and social cohesion while maintaining competitiveness.

The Challenge of Austerity for Gender Equality in Europe: A Consideration of Eight Countries at the Center of the Crisis

This chapter, published in 2015 and reprinted here, explores the comparative experience of women and men in eight European countries most affected by either the financial or the austerity crises and the challenges posed by the crisis for gender equality. It draws, for its theoretical framework and empirical evidence, on Karamessini and Rubery (2013). The immediate gender effects of both recession and austerity are primarily explained by prevailing patterns of gender segregation interacting with the scale of demand changes. There are longer term consequences as well which vary between men and women and by social class.

On the Measurement of Early Job Insecurity in Europe

In the present paper the estimation of different indicators that can be used in order to capture the extent and forms of early job insecurity is studied. This specific matter has been receiving increasing research and policy attention throughout the two last decades. The present study proposes a new composite index for measuring the degree of early job insecurity on the basis of the estimation of the transition probabilities between labour market states and school-to-work transitions, with raw data drawn from the European Union’s Labour Force Survey (EU- LFS) for the year 2014. This indicator captures the whole spectrum of early job insecurity in a single measurement. Thus, an attempt is made to provide a new index of early job insecurity, connecting it also to school-to-work transition probabilities, that captures the extent of early job insecurity.