Cyclical, policy changes, and structural factors have been put forward to explain the decline in labour force participation in Canada in the 1990s. In the first article in the symposium, Pierre Fortin and Mario Fortin attempt to determine the relative importance of these three types of factors...

During the economic crisis periods, due to the discouraged worker and added worker effects, we may not gather healthy information from the unemployment rates concerning the labor market. For this reason, it is claimed in the literature that the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) may be a...

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the behavior of participation rates in terms of gender differences. We employed smooth autoregressive transition models for the quarterly Turkish labor force participation rates (LFPR) data between 2000: Q1 – 2011: Q4 to present an...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the microfoundations of the observed asymmetric movement in aggregate unemployment rates. Using U.S. data, we find that individual labor force participation responds asymmetrically to changes in local labor market conditions, consistent with the pattern of...

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of different unemployment theories in three major economies, namely the UK, the US and Japan, by estimating the degree of dependence in the unemployment series. Both univariate and multivariate long memory methods are used. The results vary...

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of different unemployment theories in three major economies, namely the UK, the US and Japan, by estimating the degree of dependence in the unemployment series. Both univariate and multivariate long memory methods are used. The results vary...

This paper examines the effectiveness of active labour market policies (ALMPs) in improving labour market outcomes, especially of low-skilled individuals, by means of a pooled cross-country and time series database for 31 advanced countries during the period 1985-2010. The analysis includes...

The Taylor (1993) rule for determining interest rates is generalized to account for three additional variables: The money supply, money velocity, and the unemployment rate. Thus, five parameters, i.e. weights assigned to the deviation in the inflation rate, the deviation in real GDP (Gross...

Although the unemployment rate is traditionally used to diagnose the current state of the labor market, this indicator does not reflect the existence of asymmetries, mobility costs, and rigidities which impede labor to freely flow over the business cycle. Thus, to get a better portrait of the...

The increasing unemployment in Nigeria has motivated several empirical studies on the causes of the problem in the country. However, attention has not been paid to the contribution of the changes in oil prices to the unemployment problem. As a net exporting oil country, a fluctuation in oil...