This paper compares U.S. and French performance with three indicators of employment performance designed to account of job quality, measured by the incidence of low wages and involuntary part-time employment. From each country’s main household survey for 1993-2005 by age, gender and education...

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity are more ambiguous in a broader behavioral framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment controlling for income, and know...