The Swedish experiences of the 1990s provide a unique example of how large-scale active labour market programmes (ALMPs) have been used as a means to fight high unemployment. This paper surveys the empirical studies of the effects of ALMPs in Sweden. On the whole, ALMPs have probably reduced...

The concept of the "employment threshold" plays an important role in the public of unemployment. The employment threshold is defined as that growth rate of output which is necessary to keep employment constant despite the continuous rise in labor productivity. It is related to the Okun...

This paper reviews the Italian unemployment experience, analyzing in particular the time-series behavior of unemployment rates along the path that brought Italy into Europe's Economic and Monetary Union, and their disaggregated structure across geographical and demographic dimensions. High...

By international standards, unemployment in Sweden remained remarkably low throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. In the early 1990s, however, the unemployment rate skyrocketed and hit double-digit levels. Unemployment remained high for several years but exhibited a marked fall from 1997 and...

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz werden die Gründe für den Unterschied zwischen den Arbeitlosenquoten in Europa und den Vereinigten Staaten erläutert. Nach Solow ist die Ursache der Arbeitslosigkeit nicht allein die Arbeitsmarktrigidität in Europa, sondern ebenfalls die geringe Nachfrage nach Arbeit,...

We investigate how continental European unemployment can be reduced without reducing unemployment benefits and without reducing the net income of low-wage earners. Lower unemployment replacement rates reduce unemployment, the net wage and unemployment benefits. A lower tax on labour increases...

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, we survey the way in which the tax burden on labour has been proxied for in recent multi-country macro-economic studies. Second, we criticalyy evaluate these proxies. Finally, we examine to what extent the conclusions of some studies change if some...