There are many descriptions of how unemployment in Europe and other OECD countries evolved over time (see for example Blanchard (2005) for an overview). In this respect, Europe has been a puzzling case with high and persistent unemployment rates. In short: Unemployment in Europe was low in the 1960s and it increased in the 1970s and 80s. Since then, unemployment has become highly heterogeneous ...

This study examines the association between state and county unemployment rates and individuals' body weight status during the latest recession in the U.S. We used the U.S. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data in 2007, 2009 and 2011, which were collected from 722,692 American adults aged 18 or older. Overweight and obesity were defined as body mass index (BMI) ≥25, and ≥30, r...

A seasonal additive nonlinear vector autoregression (SANVAR) model is proposed for multivariate seasonal time series to explore the possible interaction among the various univariate series. Significant lagged variables are selected and additive autoregression functions estimated based on the selected variables using spline smoothing method. Conservative confidence bands are constructed for the ...

This article studies crime rates’ response to economic conditions. Using a longitudinal data set covering about 20 countries over the period 1970-2010, we investigate whether crime rates respond asymmetrically to increases in unemployment and recoveries in economic conditions. We find a positive response of crime rates on variation in unemployment rates, but we do not find compelling evidence o...

this paper tries to survey and estimate non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (nairu) and potential output. it uses the unobserved components model to propose a new method. the model consists of ukan law equations and philips curve. it uses unobservable key economic variable in the form of unobserved random trends in an equation system of three variables namely unemployment, gross dom...

Does regional unemployment increase or rather decrease entrepreneurial activity? Although this question has been hotly debated among researchers for decades the answers yielded so far are ambiguous and inconclusive. The paper proposes an innovative approach that takes not only interregional differences in unemployment rates, but also in unemployment duration and the human capital of the unemplo...

Previous estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime commonly omit determinants of criminal behavior that vary with the business cycle, creating correlation between unemployment rates and the residuals in aggregate crime regressions. In this paper, we employ several strategies that attempt to minimize or break this correlation and eliminate the accompanying omitted variables bias to estima...