This paper is intended to make a contribution to the empirical literature explaining the rise ofunemployment since the 1970s in western economies by means of interactions betweenshocks and institutions. The contribution is twofold. First, the impact of a general feature ofdeveloped economies...

This paper tests whether aggregate matching is consistent with unemployment being mainly due to search frictions or due to job queues. Using U.K. data and correcting for temporal aggregation bias, estimates of the random matching function are consistent with previous work in this field, but...

This paper considers a real business cycle model with search frictions in the labor market and labor supply which is elastic along the participation margin. Previous authors have found that such models generate counterfactually procyclical unemployment and a positively-sloped Beveridge curve....

We provide empirical evidence on the nature of spatial externalities in a matching model for the UK. We use a monthly panel of outflows, unemployment and vacancy stocks data from the registers at Jobcentres in the UK; these are mapped on to travel-to-work areas. We find evidence of significant...

Using the accurate and extensive data available in the UK New Earnings Survey, this paper investigates the extent to which nominal wages are downwardly rigid and whether such rigidity interferes with necessary real wage adjustments when inflation is low. Despite the substantial numbers of...

Theoretical predictions of the effect of TFP growth on employment are ambiguous, anddepend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs. We estimate amodel for employment, wages and investment with an annual panel for the United States,Japan and Europe and find that TFP growth...

There is evidence of a negative cross-country correlation between gender wage and employment gaps. We argue that non-random selection of women into work explains an important part of such correlation and thus of the observed variation in wage gaps. The idea is that, if women who are employed...

This paper shows that state control of some industries may have contributed to theincrease in European unemployment from the 1970s to the early 1990s. We develop asimple model with both publicly-run and privately-run enterprises and show that wheneconomic turbulence increases, higher...

This paper is an empirical analysis of unemployment patterns in the OECD countries from the 1960s to the 1990s, looking at the Beveridge Curves, real wages as well as unemployment directly. Our results indicate the following. First, the Beveridge Curves of all the countries except Norway and...

This paper aims to examine unemployment persistence in Spain by the soûcalled 'ladder' effect. This arises when highly-skilled workers who do not find a job matching their skills accept jobs which previously were occupied by less qualified staff. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model,...