This paper looks at some of the fundamental ideas in contemporary economics such as the basic economic problem, opportunity cost and allocation a person is expected to encounter when they are first introduced to economic theory. It attempts to explain how the manner in which these concepts are...

Australia has experienced a varied track record on unemployment. For the third quarter of the 20th century unemployment averaged 2.0 per cent. This is bracketed by average unemployment rates of 8.6 and 7.4 per cent in the second and fourth quarter centuries. Explanations of this phenomenon vary....

The aim of this paper is to clarify and discuss the various ways firms can make workforce reductions. This aim is accomplished by an in-depth study of an historical case; the downsizing process undertaken in the 1920s by the Swedish Tobacco Monopoly, a state-owned company that had to balance...

Does dismissal law create a "judicial risk" to which french firms are exposed? The paper discusses the different arguments (Blanchard and Tirole (2003), Cahuc and Kramarz (2004), Munoz-Perez and Serverin (2005)) using the empirical available evidence together with basic tools in economics of...

Traditional theoretical literature which neglects the benefits of stabilization policies (e.g., Lucas 1987 and 2003) ultimately relies on the small impact that macroeconomic volatility has on aggregate income and consumption. In this article, we argue that such an approach is both theoretically...

Abstract German (English abstract is added below) Arbeitslosigkeit gilt als eines der schwerwiegendsten gesellschaftlichen Probleme unserer Zeit. Doch welche Gründe liegen, trotz der über die Jahre eingeleiteten Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung der Arbeitslosigkeit, für die anhaltende...

Income drops permanently after an involuntary job displacement, but it has never been clear what happens to long-run wealth in the United States. This paper concludes that involuntary job displacement has large effects on wealth throughout a worker's lifetime. Upon displacement, wealth falls 14%...