In this thesis it is analyzed if promoting product market competition can help to to fight unemployment in Europe. We have used a general equilibrium model in order to study how reducing mark-ups and increasing productivity in one sector affect aggregate unemployment for an exogenously given...

This study poses the question about whether labour market institutions can explain unemployment rates in the ten new European Union member states. In five out of the ten new member states, unemployment rates lie above the average in the 15 member states of the European Union (EU-15) that...