The massive increase in unemployment throughout the OECD since the early 1970s has led governments in many countries to introduce, or to expand, labour market policies such as training schemes, employment subsidies, public works or schemes of counselling or assistance in job search. Such...

This paper discusses employment policy in the transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe. It argues that unemployment has arisen as a consequence of economy-wide shocks rather than as part of the process of reallocation of labour between sectors. Hence policies such as tax-based...

The rise in European unemployment is often blamed on increased mismatch between labour supply and demand- either by age, skill or region. To investigate this, we first develop models to explain differences in unemployment rates - both where labour supply is given and where it responds through...

This paper examines whether the impact of house prices and of labour market variables on migration differs as between contiguous and non-contiguous regions. We find that house price elasticites are increasingly in the length of common regional boundaries. We argue that this effect may be due to...

During the 1980s, two dimensions in particular of the unemployment problem have been a source of increasing concern for policy-makers in Europe. One id the increasing rate of structural change and the resulting decline in employment opportunities for unskilled manual workers. The other is the...

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 hiring function represents the process whereby job seekers and vacancies are matched. Migration can be seen as a special case of hiring in which a job seeker in region I is matched to a job in region j. As a consequence, high unemployment regions will ceteris paribus experience larger...

This paper investigates the determinants of regional wages in Britain using annual data from the New Earnings Survey over the period 1974-1989. Separate wage equations are estimated for male and female workers, for manuals and non-manuals and for manufacturing industry as against...

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...

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...