Using the Dutch Labour Force Survey 1991-2001, the authors investigate the incidence of part-time employment in the country with the highest part-time employment rate of the OECD countries. Women fulfil most part-time jobs, but a considerable fraction of men works part-time as well. Evidence...

This paper develops a matching model of the labour market under wage rigidity when hiring decisions are irreversible. There are two types of workers, the skilled and the unskilled. The model is used to analyse whether technological advances may have increased unemployment, and shows that this is...

The main questions addressed in this paper are: First, how did labour markets in the Visegrad countries react to the breakdown of a command economy and the transformation to a market economy? Second, which way ahead is likely, or to put it differently, what should be done now to improve...

This paper evaluates two theories of unemployment: the natural rate theory (whereby unemployment is depicted as fluctuating around a reasonably stable natural rate) and the chain reaction theory (which views movements in unemployment as the outcome of the interplay between labour market shocks...

Using a stochastic frontier model and a comprehensive dataset, we study factors that affect corporate efficiency in Europe. We find that (i) larger firms are less efficient than smaller firms, (ii) greater leverage contributes to corporate efficiency, and (iii) high competition is less...

This paper models regional earnings and unemployment in the ten regions of Great Britain between 1972 and 1995, paying particular attention to their interaction and to the important influence of the housing market. In contrast to Blanchard and Katz (1992, 1997) for the United States, we find...

This Paper studies the impact of local economic structure on local sectoral employment growth. Local employment growth is decomposed into ‘internal’ growth (the growth of the size of existing plants) and ‘external’ growth (the creation of new plants). Using panel data methods, we...

This Paper presents new evidence on the determinants of unemployment duration for men and women in Britain in the 1990s, using a nationally representative data set. It examines the impact of individual and local labour market characteristics on the probability of unemployment spells ending with...