Most people accept that structural and labour market reforms are needed in Europe. However few have been undertaken. The usual conjecture is that reforms are costly in economic performance and costly to finance. Blanchard and Giavazzi (2003) and Spector (2004) develop a general equilibrium model...

Starting in 2006 the German economy currently experiences a cyclical revival which spreads to the labor market. Unemployment decreases markedly and regular employment rises. At present, virtually all professional forecasts expect this upswing to continue in the foreseeable future. Against this...

OECD unemployment rates show long swings which dominate shorter business cycle components and these long swings show a range of common patterns. Using a panel of 21 OECD countries 1960-2002, we estimate the common factor that drives unemployment by the first principal component. This factor has...