Is it better to use carrots or sticks to get people back into work? For the past 25 years or so, a lot of countries have gone big on the latter. Germany’s Hartz IV reforms in the mid-2000s, which chivvied the unemployed to look for work and imposed financial penalties on people who refused job offers, are perhaps the most famous example. Although economists still debate their effect, unemployment plunged over the following decade and Germany shed its label as the “sick man of Europe”.
是用胡蘿卜引誘人去工作更好，還是用大棒把人趕去工作更好？在過去25年左右的時間里，許多國家都在大力實施后一種策略。德國在2000年代中期實施的哈爾茨第四階段就業改革方案(Hartz IV)可能是最著名的例子。該方案催促失業者去找工作，并對拒絕工作邀約的人做出經濟處罰。盡管該方案究竟效果如何是經濟學家仍在爭論的問題，但在該方案實施后的十年里，德國失業率大幅下降，它也摘掉了“歐洲病夫”的帽子。
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