Employment Performance: Alternative Theoretical Perspectives and the Evidence

In mainstream macroeconomics, the cross-country pattern of unemployment should reflect ‘natural’ rates (NAIRUs), which in turn are explained mainly by the rigidities imposed by labor market institutions and policies. While this view has framed most of the empirical work to date, the evidence so far is not very compelling. Recent work in the Keynesian tradition suggests that more attention should be paid to capital accumulation and monetary/fiscal policy. The central claim of this paper is that a still richer account requires embedding the Keynesian account in a comparative political economy framework to explain both levels of aggregate demand and the translation of demand to employment (and unemployment). Employment performance reflects the effectiveness of bundles of institutionalized practices concerned with firm strategies, labor relations, the welfare state, and macroeconomic policy. On this score the evidence is unequivocal: coherent institutional models grounded in high levels of social and political consensus can produce exceptionally low unemployment in labor markets characterized by low wage inequality and substantial income security.