It was early noted that the Phillips Curve explanation of wage dynamics lacks a solid microeconomic basis. As the explanatory unemployment variable in the Phillips relation is intuitively to be regarded as an indicator of labour scarcity, several authors have argued that the determination of...

How are inflation and unemployment related in the long run? Are they negatively correlated, as in the so-called naive Phillips curve theories or uncorrelated, "as in the neo-liberals' view or are they positively correlated as Friedman suggested in his Nobel lecture? <p> In this paper inflation is...</p>

Although private equity firms are often criticized for layoffs, little evidence exists regarding which employees lose their jobs and why. We argue that explanations for the job polarization process can also explain layoffs after buyouts. Buyouts reduce agency problems, which triggers automation,...

Post World War II European welfare states experienced several decades of relatively low unemployment, followed by a plague of persistently high unemployment since the 1980s. We impute the higher unemployment to welfare states' diminished ability to cope with more turbulent economic times, such...

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The analysis provides a new explanation for two widespread problems concerning European unemployment policy: the disappointingly small effect of many past reform measures on unemployment, and the political difficulties in implementing more extensive reform programs. We argue that the heart of...

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In this paper the effects of unemployment on mental health are analysed. A simple model where both the occurrence of and duration of unemployment are allowed to affect mental health is specified. Panel data are used to control for "fixed effects", i.e. omitted variables that are constant over...

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