This paper develops a theory characterizing the effects of fiscal policy on unemployment over the business cycle. The … theory is based on a model of equilibrium unemployment in which jobs are rationed in recessions. Fiscal policy in the form of … government spending on public-sector jobs reduces unemployment, especially during recessions: the fiscal multiplier …

which there are multiple equilibrium unemployment rates. The model has two equations in common with the new-Keynesian model …

A new methodology is described which tests between various equilibrium theories of unemployment using matching data … identify a matching process using data which is recorded monthly, and also shows how to identify different unemployment … those vacancies come onto the market. In particular, these workers’ experience average durations of unemployment which …

mandated unemployment insurance (UI) and employment protection (EP). To illuminate the forces in these models, we study how UI … higher layoff taxes suppress frictional unemployment in less turbulent times, prevails in the models with labour market … impossible to include generous government-supplied unemployment insurance in that model without getting the unrealistic result …

Similar durations but lower flows into unemployment gave Europe lower unemployment rates than the United States until … the 1970's. But since 1980, higher durations have kept unemployment rates in Europe persistently higher than in the U.S. A … costs and more generous unemployment compensation make its unemployment rate respond to a parameter that measures a worker …

additional leisure and personal maintenance, not in increased household production. There is no relation between unemployment … lower amount of market work in areas of long-term high unemployment is offset by additional household production. In … contrast, in those areas where unemployment has risen cyclically reduced market work is made up almost entirely by additional …