"This paper uses the old-Keynesian representative agent model developed in Farmer (2010b) to answer two questions: 1) do increased government purchases crowd out private consumption? 2) do increased government purchases reduce unemployment? Farmer compared permanent tax financed expenditure...

In Europe, high and persistent unemployment is usually attributed entirely to "labor market rigidity". The only remedy seriously discussed is deregulation of the labor market. This essay argues that there are two further sources of high unemployment in Europe: over-regulation and weakness of...