Our paper revisits Okun's relationship between observed unemployment rates and output gaps. We include in the relationship the effect of labour market institutions as well as age and gender effects. Our empirical analysis is based on 20 OECD countries over the period 1985-2013. We find that the...

Our paper revisits Okun's relationship between observed unemployment rates and output gaps. We include in the relationship the effect of labour market institutions as well as age and gender effects. Our empirical analysis is based on 20 OECD countries over the period 1985-2013. We find that the...

In the past decades unemployment in the Netherlands has gone down substantially. The main suspects responsible for this decline are the growth of part-time labor, the reform of the benefit system and wage moderation. Nevertheless, in 2002 the unemployment rate in the Netherlands has increased...

Recent evaluations of active labor market policies are not very optimistic about their effectiveness to bring unemployed back to work. An important reason is that unemployed get locked-in, that is they reduce their effort to find a regular job. This paper uses an administrative dataset from the...

In the past decades unemployment in the Netherlands has gone down substantially. The main suspects responsible for this decline are the growth of part-time labor, the reform of the benefit system and wage moderation. Nevertheless, in 2002 the unemployment rate in the Netherlands has increased...

This paper presents a theory and an empirical investigation on cyclical fluctuations in workplace accidents. The theory is based on the idea that reporting an accident dents the reputation of a worker and raises the probability that he is fired. Therefore a country with a high or an increasing...

The development of the unemployment rate differs substantially between OECD countries. In recent years some countries experienced a mild increase, other countries had a stable unemployment rate, while there are also 'successful' countries in which the unemployment rate decreased a lot. A common...

This paper examines whether unemployment of non-western immigrant workers in the Netherlands was disproportionally affected by the Great Recession. We analyze unemployment data covering the period November 2007 to February 2013 finding that the Great Recession affected unemployment rates of...