Persistent unemployment is the top social and economic problem of most EU countries. Today, the unemployment rate in most EU countries is above ten percent and, although unemployment has decreased during expansions, the average EU unemployment rate within each cycle has increased since the early...

Over the last quarter century, the Spanish unemployment rate has gone from 3.5 per cent to 24 per cent of the labor force, and then back to 13 per cent. In this paper we describe this extraordinary evolution more in detail, discuss the main shocks and institutions behind it, and provide a set of...