This paper challenges what is the standard account of UK unemployment, namely that the major swings in unemployment … unemployment are due, instead, to very prolonged after-effects of persistent (transitory but long-lasting) shocks. We argue that (a …) past UK labour market shocks have prolonged after-effects on unemployment due to interactions among different lagged …

On both theoretical and empirical grounds, this paper provides evidence that refutes the natural rate of unemployment … (NRU) hypothesis as an explanation of the evolution of regional disparities in the unemployment rate. We first present our … analytical framework, which follows the chain reaction theory (CRT) of unemployment and argues that (i) a system of interactive …

causes of the unemployment upturn in 1973-1983 and the subsequent decline in 1993-2006. Our results show that (i) the main … determinants of the unemployment rise in the 1970s and early 1980s were wage-push factors, the two oil price shocks and the … increase in interest rates, and (ii) the acceleration in capital accumulation was the crucial driving force of unemployment in …