This book, edited by S.G.B. Henry and Dennis J. Snower, examines the high unemployment that has plagued five European countries- France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom- for more than a decade. Its methodology focuses on the mechanisms that prevent employers and employees from...

This paper argues that an important group of labor market policies are complementary in the sense that the effect of each policy is greater when implemented in conjunction with the other policies than in isolation. This may explain why the diverse, piecemeal labor market reforms in many European...

The paper examines the employment and unemployment implications of permitting unemployed people to use part of their unemployment benefits to provide employment vouchers to the firms that hire them. This opportunity to transfer unemployment benefits into employment subsidies--“benefit...

The paper surveys unemployment policies for advanced market economies and evaluates them by examining the predictions of the underlying macroeconomic theories. The basic idea is that, for the most part, different unemployment policy prescriptions rest; on different macroeconomic theories, and...

Wir präsentieren einen Vorschlag für die Neuausrichtung der Arbeitslosenunterstützung in Deutschland: die Einführung von Beschäftigungskonten. Anstatt Steuern/Beiträge zu zahlen, die die Arbeitslosenunterstützung finanzieren, zahlen Beschäftigte laufend auf Ihre Beschäftigungskonten...

This paper provides a theoretical and quantitative analysis of various types of wellknown employment subsidies. Two important questions are addressed: (i) How should employment subsidies be targeted? (ii) How large should the subsidies be? We consider measures involving targeting workers with...

This paper addresses the question of why high unemployment rates tend to persist even after their proximate causes have been reversed (e.g., after wages relative to productivity have fallen). We suggest that the longer people are unemployed, the greater is their cumulative likelihood of falling...