This paper analyzes the determinants of the European Commission's NAIRU estimates for 14 European OECD countries during … 1985-2012. The NAIRU is a poor proxy for 'structural unemployment': Labor market institutions - employment protection … legislation, union density, tax wedge, minimum wages - underperform in explaining the NAIRU, while cyclical variables - capital …

The NAIRU is a key component of potential output and as such critically affects output gap estimates. In May 2014, the … European Commission changed its specification of the NAIRU for several countries and lowered its NAIRU estimates - in the case … of Spain from 26.6% to 20.7% for 2015. To test the dependence of the new NAIRU on unemployment versus structural factors …

in NAIRU but do not appear as promising explanations of the events of the early 1990s. The fall in unemployment in the … NAIRU. …

Starting from a Post-Keynesian model in which employment is determined by effective demand and the NAIRU is viewed as a … to prevent the rate of unemployment from falling below the NAIRU. But price stability also depends on labour market … institutions. Horizontally and vertically co-ordinated wage bargaining allows for a considerable reduction of the NAIRU and hence …

in NAIRU but do not appear as promising explanations of the events of the early 1990s. The fall in unemployment in the … NAIRU …