The aim of this paper is to analyze and estimate salient characteristics of unemployment dynamics. Movements in unemployment are viewed as "chain reactions" of responses to labour market shocks, working their way through systems of interacting lagged adjustment processes. In the context of...

Reputation indexes of employment protection have proven popular constructs in studies of the covariation of labor market institutions and macroeconomic outcomes. Portugal occupies an unenviable rank order in such measures of the stringency of employment protection. We critique this reputation in...

A major aim of recent empirical modelling of the business cycle isto identify the relative importance of aggregate supply and demandshocks. Supply or technology shocks are associated with permanent(structural) effects on economic activity whereas demand shocks arerelated to temporary (cyclical)...