This paper examines the movements in EU unemployment from two perspectives: (a) the NRU/NAIRU perspective, in which … unemployment movements are attributed largely to changes in the long-run equilibrium unemployment rate and (b) the chain …-reaction perspective, in which unemployment movements are viewed as the outcome of the interplay between labor market shocks and prolonged …

The analysis provides a new explanation for two widespread problems concerning European unemployment policy: the … disappointingly small effect of many past reform measures on unemployment, and the political difficulties in implementing more … implement broad-based reform strategies. Our analysis suggests that major unemployment policies are characterised by economic …

This paper challenges what is the standard account of UK unemployment, namely that the major swings in unemployment … over the past 25 years are due predominantly to movements in the underlying empirical “natural rate of unemployment” (NRU … unemployment are due, instead, to very prolonged after-effects of persistent (transitory but long-lasting) shocks. We argue that (a …

The aim of this paper is to analyze and estimate salient characteristics of unemployment dynamics. Movements in … unemployment are viewed as "chain reactions" of responses to labor market shocks, working their way through systems of interacting … aggregate measures of unemployment responses to temporary and permanent shocks. These measures are temporal (depicting how long …

This paper provides a critique of the "unemployment invariance hypothesis", according to which the behavior of the … labor market ensures that the long-run unemployment rate is independent of the size of the capital stock, productivity, and … equilibrating mechanisms to ensure unemployment invariance and that other markets may perform part of the equilibrating process as …

We explore the implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by unemployment accounts (UA). Under … the UA system, employed people would be required to make ongoing contributions to their unemployment accounts, and the … balances in these accounts would then be available to them during periods of unemployment. The government would be able to …

costs influence insider wages and outsiders' opportunities and how these costs affect employment and unemployment. We also … address the more complex, and open, question of how employment and unemployment move through time, in response to labor market …

The paper examines the relative effectiveness of two policy proposals in reducing unemployment and working poverty …: unemployment vouchers and low-wage subsidies. The unemployment vouchers are targeted exclusively at the unemployed (especially the … workers are (i.e. the more their wages rise with employment duration), the more effective will unemployment vouchers be …