This paper surveys the main changes in the level of employment and in the wage structure in OECD countries during the last two decades. Despite a slowdown in the growth rates of output and productivity, employment has continued to grow in the OECD countries. The working age population has also...

The fall in output and employment, and the rise in unemployment, during the transition in Bulgaria have been exceptionally severe. This paper examines possible causes, including the role of the financial stabilisation package, collective bargaining and the excess wage tax, the gradual emergence...

While variations across countries in the experiences of mass unemployment have been extensively analysed, the even more striking variation over time is much less well understood. This paper argues that the capacity of a nation to maintain full employment by means of 'Keynesian' fiscal and...

This paper investigates the extent of labour market allocation across broad industrial sectors in the transition of economies of Eastern Europe since 1989. It offers various measures of the magnitude of labour misallocation and of the speed and efficiency of reallocation during the first half of...

According to Paul Krugman, "the European unemployment problem and the US inequality problem are two sides of the same coin". In other words, both continents have had the same shift in demand towards skill; in the US relative wages have adjusted and in Europe not. The implication of this...

Our conclusions are the most important influences on unemployment come from the following (i) The longer unemployment benefits are available the longer unemployment lasts. Similarly, higher levels of benefits generate higher unemployment, with an elasticity of around one half. On the other hand...