relative unemployment has fallen in recent years in part because its more flexible labor market institutions allow shocks to … unemployment over the last three decades. We find that while macroeconomic and demographic shocks and changing labor market … institutions explain a modest portion of this change, the interaction of these shocks and labor market institutions is the most …

Using data from 17 OECD countries over the 1960-96 period, we investigate the impact of institutions on the relative … employment of youth, women, and older individuals. Theoretically, we show that labor market institutions meant to improve workers … allows us to control for unmeasured country-specific factors that affect relative employment and unemployment, we find that …