We suggest the use of an Internet job-search indicator (the Google Index, GI) as the best leading indicator to predict the US unemployment rate. We perform a deep out-of-sample forecasting comparison analyzing many models that adopt both our preferred leading indicator (GI), the more standard...

Previous literature on statistical discrimination explained stereotypes based on the existence of multiple equilibria, in which principals have different self-confirming beliefs about different social groups (Arrow, 1973; Coate and Loury, 1993). However, the literature has not provided an account of...

The quality of one's social network significantly affects his economic success. Even after the skill acquisition period, the social network influences economic success through various routes such as mentoring, job searching, business connections, or information channeling. In this paper I...

The paper put his attention on the active economic role of a local institution of Northern Italy against the unemployment and the economic crisis during the 2008. The experience shows the importance of cooperation beetween the municipal Administration, the local unions and the most important...

The claim that the unemployed should be allocated to ‘government as employer of last resort’ schemes (like the WPA in the US in the 1930s) has major flaws. One flaw is the assumption that public sector work of this sort is less inflationary than private sector employment. A second flaw is...

This paper, based on data from the National Population Health Surveys (NPHS) from 1994 to 2007, analyzes the evolution of social inequalities in health in Quebec since the mid-1990s using two health measures namely self-assessed health (SAH) and health utility index (HUI). Two methods are used....

The OECD’s unemployment problem is largely concentrated among low-skilled workers. In this paper, four explanations of low-skilled workers’ unemployment are examined: wage-setting institutions, employment regulation, globalization, and monetary policy. The analysis is based on pooled...

It is often argued that rigid labour market and centralized bargaining are harmful employment and growth. This paper looks at the case of Nordic countries as a counter-example pointing to some weaknesses of this view. Rigid labour markets, while reducing the offer of low quality jobs, increase...

This paper provides an analysis of the labour market adjustment to the 2008-2009 recession in terms of employment, unemployment, hours worked and wages. It highlights differences in the response of employment and unemployment across countries and different socioeconomic groups. For all EU Member...

The finite state Markov-Chain approximation method developed by Tauchen (1986) and Tauchen and Hussey (1991) is widely used in economics, finance and econometrics in solving for functional equations where state variables follow an autoregressive process. For highly persistent processes, the...