This paper uses a threshold autoregressive (TAR) framework to assess the relative importance of structural breaks and asymmetric persistence in accounting for the post-war unemployment experience. In comparing unemployment patterns across time periods and countries, we take the US as a...

This study compares wage mobility in Portugal and the UK, replicating the work by Dickens (2000) and progressing to discuss the impact of differences in the institutional framework, which is more regulated and centralized in Portugal, with minimum wages, employment protection, and collective...

We investigate the determinants of the remarkable increase in intra-regional migrations since the 1980’s in Spain, using a large administrative micro dataset on migrants. Conditional migration probabilities are identified by comparing the migrants’ joint distribution of characteristics to...

When firms cluster in the same local labour market, they face a trade-off between the benefits of labour pooling (i.e., access to workers whose knowledge helps reduce costs) and the costs of labour poaching (i.e., loss of some key workers to competition and the indirect effect of a higher wage...

Migration research has been quite successful in explaining changes in migration flows. Less satisfactory are its answers as to why the overwhelming majority of people remain immobile, despite persistent regional wealth differences and economic integration proceeding. We suggest complementing...

In 1990 Colombia replaced its traditional system of severance payments with a new system of severance payments savings accounts (SPSAs). Although severance payments often are justified on the grounds that they provide insurance against earnings loss, they also increase costs for employers and...

We decompose the low-frequency movements in labour productivity into an investment-neutral and investment-specific technology component. We show that neutral technology shocks cause an increase in job creation and job destruction and lead to a reduction in aggregate employment....

We consider an economic geography model in which all firms and workers are mobile, but the agglomeration of firms and workers within a region generates urban costs. We show that industries with high transport costs tend to be more agglomerated than industries with low transport costs. This is to...

The unemployment dynamics in the Mezzogiorno of Italy seem to corroborate the New Economic Geography predictions, whereby, under some specific hypotheses, a stronger economic integration can amplify the regional polarisation of unemployment rates in Europe. It is, however, unclear which features...

Labour markets in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) will be a key vehicle for the expression and reallocation of skills and talents in the transformation process. To a large extent, the emergence of unemployment is an indicator of this restructuring and reallocation. This paper surveys some of...