In the mid-1980s, many European countries introduced fixed-term contracts. Since then their labor markets have become more dynamic. This paper studies the implications of such reforms for the duration distribution of unemployment, with particular emphasis on the changes in the duration...

The intra-distributional mobility of German income dynamics is analysed using GSOEP. Transition probabilities are found to be time-varying. The tested models comprise various mixed Markov chains in discrete time and a non-stationary mover-stayer model is proposed. In order to explain the...

I examine the dynamic evolutions of unemployment, hours of work and the service share since the war in the United States and Europe. The theoretical model brings together all three and emphasizes technological growth. Computations show that the very low unemployment in Europe in the 1960s was...

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

We provide a critique of the methods that have been used to derive measures of income risk and draw attention to the importance of demographic factors as a source of income risk. We also propose new measures of the contribution to total income risk of demographic and labour market factors....

This paper investigates the efficiency wage hypothesis and derives a tractable expression for the profit loss incurred by deviations from the efficiency wage. The extent of the wage deviation can be inferred from production function parameters. The resulting profit loss shown to depend upon the...

This paper shows that, with (partial) irreversibility, higher uncertainty reduces the impact effect of demand shocks on investment. Uncertainty increases real option values making firms more cautious when investing or disinvesting. This is confirmed both numerically for a model with a rich mix...

Disadvantaged groups tend also to constitute population minorities. One consequence of this is that the policies implemented by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect minority interests. A policy solution is to enhance the political power of minority groups as a vehicle for...

Nonparametric regression is developed for data with both a temporal and a cross-sectional dimension. The model includes additive, unknown, individual-specific components and allows also for cross-sectional and temporal dependence and conditional heteroscedasticity. A simple nonparametric...

A dynamic panel data model is considered that contains possibly stochastic individual components and a common stochastic time trend that allows for stationary and nonstationary long memory and general parametric short memory. We propose four different ways of coping with the individual effects...