The massive increase in unemployment throughout the OECD since the early 1970s has led governments in many countries to introduce, or to expand, labour market policies such as training schemes, employment subsidies, public works or schemes of counselling or assistance in job search. Such...

The rise in European unemployment is often blamed on increased mismatch between labour supply and demand- either by age, skill or region. To investigate this, we first develop models to explain differences in unemployment rates - both where labour supply is given and where it responds through...

This paper investigates the determinants of regional wages in Britain using annual data from the New Earnings Survey over the period 1974-1989. Separate wage equations are estimated for male and female workers, for manuals and non-manuals and for manufacturing industry as against...

This paper investigates the extent of labour market allocation across broad industrial sectors in the transition of economies of Eastern Europe since 1989. It offers various measures of the magnitude of labour misallocation and of the speed and efficiency of reallocation during the first half of...

According to Paul Krugman, "the European unemployment problem and the US inequality problem are two sides of the same coin". In other words, both continents have had the same shift in demand towards skill; in the US relative wages have adjusted and in Europe not. The implication of this...

Our conclusions are the most important influences on unemployment come from the following (i) The longer unemployment benefits are available the longer unemployment lasts. Similarly, higher levels of benefits generate higher unemployment, with an elasticity of around one half. On the other hand...

We study a multi-sector model of growth with differences in TFP growth rates across sectorsand derive sufficient conditions for the coexistence of a balanced aggregate growth path, withall aggregates growing at the same rate, and structural change, characterized by sectoral laborreallocation....

We survey the microfoundations, empirical evidence and estimation issues underlying the aggregate matching function. Several microeconomic matching mechanisms have been suggested in the literature with some successes but none is generally accepted as superior to all others. Instead, an aggregate...

We study long-run trends in market hours of work and employment shifts across economic sectors driven by uneven TFP growth in market and home production. We focus on the structural transformation between agriculture, manufacturing and services and on the marketization of home production. The...

I model and simulate the effects of employment tax cuts on unemployment and wages in four equilibrium models: competitive, union bargaining, search and efficiency wages. I find that if the ratio of unemployment compensation to wages is fixed, the effect of the tax cut is mainly on wages. But if...