The search theory approach to understanding unemployment flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. It has provided economists with a rich set of models for analyzing unemployment and labor market issues more generally. Unfortunately, while economists have found modern search theory to be an invaluable tool, the insights provided by this approach remain largely unfamiliar to noneconomists. This rev...

The search theory approach to understanding unemployment flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. It has provided economists with a rich set of models for analyzing unemployment and labor market issues more generally. Unfortunately, while economists have found modern search theory to be an invaluable tool, the insights provided by this approach remain largely unfamiliar to noneconomists. This rev...

It is critical because average unemployment among young people is, in all countries of the region, much higher than average unemployment overall. In fact, in Latin America and the Caribbean the youth unemployment rate is twice the overall unemployment rate and three times the rate for adults; in some countries it is as high as five times the rate for adults over age 45. What is more, young peop...

In a life-cycle model, we calculate the contribution of the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) on the unemployment rates in Canada and the U.S. The model predicts a 0.81% difference in unemployment rates (one third of the actual difference) in these countries. Social welfare improves if the benefit ratio increases from 45 percent to 55 percent of the working income. Savings drop and aver...

The Ins and Outs of European Unemployment In this paper we study the contribution of inflows and outflows to the dynamics of unemployment in three European countries, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. We compare performance in these three countries making use of both administrative and labor force survey data. We find that the impact of the 1980s reforms in Britain is evident in the contrib...

Persistence and the German Unemployment Problem: Empirical Evidence on German Labor Market Flows Using a retrospective monthly calendarium of individuals’ major economic activities, this paper characterizes the monthly employment and unemployment rates and the monthly transition intensities between the states of employment, unemployment, and out-of-thelabor-force for the German labor market bet...

The relationship between wage inflation and unemployment has been extensively investigated since the early work of Phillips [Phillips, A.W., 1958. The relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the U.K. 1861–1957. Economica 25, 283–299] and Lipsey [Lipsey, R.G., 1960. The relation between unemployment and the rate of change of money wage rates in the U.K. 1861–1...

While in recent years the unemployment rate has fallen from its peak of over 11 per cent in the early 1990s, the current rate of unemployment – at just over 8 per cent, about the average for the past fifteen years – is still of concern for both economic and social reasons. From an economic perspective, unemployment represents the underutilisation of one of the economy's main resources, labour. ...