Unemployment and the Structure of Labor Markets: The Long View.

Understanding the causes of high unemployment requires first understanding the structure of labor markets. This is an historical agenda, since it is only over time that there is significant variation in the institutions structuring labor market outcomes. This paper therefore adopts a long view on the operation of labor markets in order to provide a context for discussions of the sources and solutions to Europe's current unemployment problem. It characterizes the operation of labor markets since the second half of the 19th century. It pursues comparisons with market structure and performance in the interwar years and concludes with implications for today.