Structural unemployment differs from cyclical unemployment by not disappearing in cyclical booms. In economic theory, structural unemployment is usually analyzed in terms of the concept of equilibrium unemployment (the “natural unemployment rate” in Friedman’s terminology). Two elaborate concepts of equilibrium unemployment – the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (the NAIRU) and t...

A remarkable feature of the current U.S. economic expansion has been its ability to shrug off the adverse effects of financial crises and economic slowdowns around the world for nearly two years. Employment has been expanding smartly and unemployment has continued to edge down. Recently, however, foreign-sector developments have triggered a sizable shift in the sectoral composition of U.S. empl...

Shimer (2012) accounts for the volatility of unemployment based on a model of homogeneous unemployment. Using data on short-term unemployment he finds that most of unemployment volatility is accounted for by variations in the exit rate from unemployment. The assumption of homogeneous exit rates is inconsistent with the observed negative duration dependence of unemployment exit rates for the U.S...

*The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System. he hiring and firing decisions of individual businesses are one of the drivers behind movements in the unemployment rate during expansions and recessions. Whether a recession is driven by large job losses or weak hiring will grea...

This study examined the association between unemployment and life expectancy in the United States during 1990-2010. Census-based unemployment rates were linked to US county-level mortality data. Life expectancies were calculated by age, sex, race, and unemployment level during 1990-2010. Differences in life expectancy were decomposed by age and cause of death. Life expectancy was consistently l...

This paper examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on credit markets. Exploiting heterogeneity in the generosity of unemployment insurance across US states and over time, we find that UI helps the unemployed avoid defaulting on their debt. For every $1,000 increase in maximum UI benefits, mortgage delinquency drops by 2% and the eviction rate drops by 10% among unemployed homeowners....

Eligibility for social security benefits in many advanced economies is dependent on unemployed and underemployed people carrying out an expanding range of job search, training and work preparation activities, as well as mandatory unpaid labour (workfare). Increasingly, these activities include interventions intended to modify attitudes, beliefs and personality, notably through the imposition of...

This paper identifies goal handling processes that begin to account for the kind of processes involved in invention. We identify new goal properties and mechanisms for processing goals, as well as means of integrating opportunism, deliberation, and social interaction into goal/plan processes. We focus on enterprise goals, which extend traditional design goals and knowledge goals to address sign...