This paper is the first to quantify the relationship between the incidence of the digital economy and long-term frictional unemployment across countries. The resulting evidence indicates that there is a robust, negative partial correlation between national unemployment rates and the incidence of...

Expenditures on job placement and related services make up a substantial share of many countries' GDP. Contracting out to private providers is often proposed as a more efficient alternative to the state provision of placement services. However, the responsible state agency has to design and...

During a period, an Unemployment Fund (UF) handles members and beneficiaries, at a cost. In this, they are more or less efficient. Four optimizations indicate that the aggregate cost may be reduced by as much as 35 per cent. In the process, the inefficient UFs are identified. Moreover, the...

The aim of this study is to investigate the negative correlation between unemployment and life satisfaction in the 27 post-socialist countries. First, we measured the well-being cost of life satisfaction brought from pecuniary and non-pecuniary sources. In line with the previous literature, the...

Exploiting a district level data set on the 2007/8 post-election violence in Kenya, this paper investigates why polarization between ethnic groups results in violent conflict in some cases, but not in others. After the announcement of highly controversial election results in December 2007,...

Contracting out job placement services might save costs and provide a service capacity buffer in times of increasing unemployment. However, state agencies must be able to ensure a suitable balance between services and quality, and to carefully monitor and evaluate private provider outcomes....