Switzerland, traditionally a ?zero unemployment? economy, has seen an unprecedented rise in joblessness in the 1990s although unemployment fell again to a rather low level after 1997. This paper tests whether Switzerland experienced a negative relative net demand shock against the low skilled...

Switzerland, traditionally a "zero unemployment" economy, has seen an unprecedented rise in joblessness in the 1990s although unemployment fell again to a rather low level after 1997. This paper tests whether Switzerland experienced a negative relative net demand shock against the low skilled...

I extend a two-skill group model by Katz andMurphy (1992) to estimate relative demand and supply for skills as well as wage rigidity in Germany. Using three data sets for Germany, two for Britain and one for the United States, I simulate the change in relative wage rigidity (wage compression) in...

The Netherlands have experienced an employment miracle since the 1980s. This note investigates what happened to the wage, unemployment, and non-employment structures between 1988 and 1998, when both unemployment and non-employment rates decreased markedly. Surprisingly, I find no significant...