In this paper we examine Australian data on national and regional employment numbers, focusing in particular on whether there have been common national and regional changes in the volatility of employment. A subsidiary objective is to assess whether the results derived from traditional growth...

The paper seeks to 'explain' certain stylised facts in relation to flows into and out of Unemployment and especiaIly to identify the 'proximate' determinants of the amplitude and the frequency of fluctuations in the Unemployment Rate over the course of the business cycle. Since the evolution of...

In this paper we examine the volatility of aggregate output and employment in Australia with the aid of a frequency filtering method (the Butterworth filter) that allows each time series to be decomposed into trend, cycle and noise components. This analysis is compared with more traditional...

In this paper we deal with five related questions. What are the 'stylised facts'about the behaviour of flows into and out of unemployment and the Unemployment Rate in Australia, especially in recessions? Why does the number of persons flowing out of Unemployment (including the number flowing...

This paper examines the manner in which labour services are modelled in the aggregate production function, concentrating on the relationship between numbers employed and average hours worked. It argues that numbers employed and hours worked are not perfect substitutes and that conventional...

While it is correct to say that Carlyle first applied the exact phrase “dismal science” to political economy in his 1849 article on plantation labour in the West Indies, I argue that Carlyle came to the view that political economy was “dismal” well before that time. Indeed, his negative...

Students are very interested in lecture examples and class exercises involving data connected to the maiden voyage and the sinking of the liner Titanic. Information on the passengers and their fate can be used to explore relationships between various tests for differences in survival rates...

This paper considers the most appropriate technique to be used to decompose moments over time of a weighted average into rate and weight (age) components and also proposes various graphical methods by which we can best present the results of decomposition procedures. The material is illustrated...

In this paper we develop a framework which is appropriate for the systematic investigation of the relationship between net (and gross) flows between different labour market states and movements in the unemployment rate. We use that framework to investigate the behaviour of net flows of persons...

This paper explores the following question - Has there been any long-run increase (or decrease) in the ‘incidence’ of long-term unemployment once we have corrected for cyclical factors? Our research leads us to conclude: (i) that the incidence of male long-term unemployment has been neither...