Using publicly available data for a group of 20 OECD countries, we find that the cyclical volatility of the unemployment rate exhibits substantial cross-country and time variation. We then investigate empirically whether labour market institutions can account for this observed heterogeneity and...

We assess the impact of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) on employment in the UK over the 1999-2010 period explicitly modelling the effect of the 2008 to 2010 recession. Identification is facilitated by using variation in the bite of the NMW across local labour markets with the use of the...