This paper examines the movements in EU unemployment from two perspectives: (a) the NRU/NAIRU perspective, in which … unemployment movements are attributed largely to changes in the long-run equilibrium unemployment rate and (b) the chain …-reaction perspective, in which unemployment movements are viewed as the outcome of the interplay between labor market shocks and prolonged …

This paper challenges what is the standard account of UK unemployment, namely that the major swings in unemployment … over the past 25 years are due predominantly to movements in the underlying empirical "natural rate of unemployment" (NRU … unemployment are due, instead, to very prolonged after-effects of persistent (transitory but long-lasting) shocks. We argue that (a …