This paper develops a political economy model of multiple unemployment equilibria to provide a theory of an endogenous … natural rate of unemployment. This model is applied to the UK and the US interwar period which is remembered as the decade of … mass unemployment. The theory here sees the natural rate and the associated path of unemployment as a reaction to shocks …

We develop a theoretical nonlinear model of equilibrium unemployment and test its policy implications for a number of … OECD countries. The theory here sees the natural rate and the associated equilibrium path of unemployment as endogenous … demanding more or less social protection. The results from a dozen OECD economies appear to confirm a pattern of unemployment …

elasticities for those who experienced unemployment during the previous year and those on higher incomes; for average employed men …

determine local wages and unemployment; when mobility between regions is obstructed by rent subsidies and controls, unemployment … and wage differentials arise. Because unemployment benefits set a floor beneath the supply price of labor, as these … differentials rise, so too does the national unemployment rate (in declining regions unemployment is the major response, in growing …

The paper surveys recent analyses of rising unemployment in Europe based on the concept of the natural rate. It argues … efficiency wages, hysteresis, and insiders/outsiders are related to a core theory in which the unemployment benefit is the basic …, and that in its absence they would fail to explain unemployment. …