Renewed interest in economic growth has encouraged studies of how different sectors have contributed to convergence trends. Comparing productivity levels across countries is notoriously tricky, but one attractive approach has been to deflate sector value added by the PPP exchange rate for GDP....

This paper provides a critical view of the cross country literature on the impact of labour market institutions and policies on the evolving pattern of unemployment in OECD countries. Such widely used indicators as the generosity of unemployment insurance or the strength of trade unions are...

Full employment was the centrepiece of the economic policy of social democracy in the post-war period. Whilst the role of Keynesianism in policy making may be exaggerated, it offered the prospect of maintaining full employment without any section of society having to pay. Problems with the...

Analysis of contemporary unemployment has increasingly focussed on the position of the least skilled. The deterioration in their labour market position is first situated in the context of structural trends in the labour market. The development of labour market inequality in the 1980s is...

This paper investigates the relationship between export market shares and relative unit labour costs using a long panel of twelve manufacturing industries across fourteen OECD countries. We ask two questions: (a) how sensitive are export market shares to changes in relative costs and (b) what...