This paper starts from the observation that despite their very high levels of unemployment, major European countries … have devoted few resources to reducing it. This suggests that there is little political concern about high unemployment. I …

In this paper we present an investigation of unemployment persistence in Japan, the United States and fourteen European … recent differential unemployment persistence in our sample of countries: first, sluggishness in labour demand, and second … deviations from target. We also examine the short-run and medium-run effects on unemployment of shocks and policies that shift …

We study a number of mechanisms through which an economy can be stuck at a high unemployment equilibrium because a poor … measures that have been undertaken to cure unemployment. The message of the paper is that curing the European unemployment …

elasticities for those who experienced unemployment during the previous year and those on higher incomes; for average employed men …

spirit of Blanchard and Summers (1988), the model can generate multiple equilibria, with a low-quits/high-unemployment … equilibrium coexisting with a high-quits/low-unemployment equilibrium. Under weak conditions, low-unemployment equilibria Pareto … dominate high-unemployment equilibria. Mobility premia improve aggregate welfare but may increase unemployment. …