This paper views movements in unemployment as the result of the interaction between: (a) lags in labour market … decisions; and (b) labour market shocks with temporary and permanent components. Two features of unemployment dynamics are … examined: (i) `unemployment persistence', arising when temporary shocks have persistent effects on unemployment; and (ii …

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 … - on the ability of these theories to predict some salient stylized facts about unemployment behaviour. The paper considers …

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 … unemployment not only in the short run, but in the long run as well. The reason is that, in the presence of growing exogenous …

This paper studies the role of culture in shaping unemployment outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on local … political jurisdictions. Local contrasts across the language border identify the role of culture for unemployment. Our findings … indicate that differences in culture explain differences in unemployment duration on the order of 20 %. Moreover, we find that …

monthly employment and unemployment rates and the monthly transition intensities between the states of employment …, unemployment, and out-of-the-labor- force for the German labor market between January/February 1983 and November/December 1994. The …

Switzerland, traditionally a ‘zero unemployment’ economy, has seen an unprecedented rise in joblessness in the 1990s … although unemployment fell again to a rather low level after 1997. This Paper tests whether Switzerland experienced a negative … shock and find that they were rigid, which can explain the relative unemployment increase for this group. Finally, I test …