Purpose – The paper aims to study the effect of the unemployment rate and its volatility on crime in the USA. It proposes that not only the unemployment rate, but also its volatility affect the crime. Design/methodology/approach – First, the volatility of the unemployment rate is calculated...

The authors analyze the degree of persistence of the unemployment rates of the ten Canadian provinces using quarterly data for the period 1976:1-2005:4. They apply a two-break minimum Lagrange Multiplier (LM) unit root statistic, which, unlike standard unit root statistics (without or with...

Quarterly time series data from Canada and the Canadian provinces for the period 1976:1-2005:3 are examined to determine if the unemployment rates in the Canadian provinces are converging to the national rate of unemployment. Firstly, we check for existence of stochastic convergence using recent...