Public policies may affect employment by directly creating jobs, facilitating job creation, or augmenting labor supply. In labor markets with high unemployment, such employment changes may have significant net efficiency benefits, which should be included in benefit-cost analyses. The research...

This book provides a detailed insider's view under the Clinton and Bush administrations of the process by which eight social science experiments influenced federal laws and policies to alleviate joblessness in the United States.

This paper considers employment growth and unemployment from 1990-2010 in a cross-section of cities in light of practical tools that city governments have at their disposal to provide relief. In particular, I test educational attainment (both initial levels and growth over time) and public...

Davidson and Matusz extend the traditional analysis of international trade to allow for labor markets characterized by workers whose labor-market experiences are punctuated by spells of involuntary unemployment. They demonstrate that such extensions are easily accomplished and that they provide...

This paper examines labor market conditions and public employment policies in the United States during what some are calling the Great Recession. We document the dramatic labor market changes that rapidly unfolded when the rate of gross domestic product growth turned negative, from the end of...

We reexamine the well-publicized claim that "rapid mass privatisation [of state-owned enterprises] . . . was a crucial determinant of differences in adult mortality trends in postcommunist countries" (Stuckler, King and McKee, 2009). Our analysis shows that the estimated correlation of...

This monograph provides a relatively nontechnical summary of the prominent theories of unemployment that have emerged since 1960: search, disequilibrium, implicit contracts, efficiency wage, and insider/outsider models.

Most states have exhausted their unemployment insurance (UI) trust fund and borrowed from the federal government at least once during the past 35 years. Under such circumstances, states are required by law to raise UI taxes to replenish their trust funds and to pay off their debts to the federal...