European regions have experienced a polarisation of their unemployment rates between 1986 and 1996, as regions with intermediate rates have been driven by changes in regional employment, only partly offset by labour force changes. Regions'' outcomes have closely followed those of neighbouring...

This paper presents an impact evaluation of the French enterprise zone program which was initiated in 1997 to help unemployed workers find employment by granting a significant wage-tax exemption (about one third of total labor costs) to firms hiring at least 20% of their labor force locally....

There are large spatial disparities in unemployment durations across the 1,300 municipalitiesin the Ile-de-France region (Paris Greater Area). In order to characterize these imbalances,we estimate a proportional hazard model stratified by municipality on an exhaustive datasetof all unemployment...

This paper presents an impact evaluation of the French enterprise zone program which was initiated in 1997 to help unemployed workers find employment by granting a significant wage-tax exemption (about one third of total labor costs) to firms hiring at least 20% of their labor force locally....

There are large spatial disparities in unemployment durations across the 1,300 municipalities in the Ile-de-France region (Paris Greater Area). In order to characterize these imbalances, we estimate a proportional hazard model stratified by municipality on an exhaustive dataset of all...

This paper is a statistical evaluation of the 1997 enterprise zone program in France. We investigate whether the program increased the pace at which unemployed workers residing in targeted municipalities and surrounding areas find employment. The work relies on a two-stage analysis of...

Average unemployment in Europe today is relatively high compared with OECD countries outside Europe. The majority of countries in Europe today have lower unemployment than any OECD country outside Europe, including the US. These two fa cts are consistent because the four largest countries in...