Unemployment and indeterminacy

Using an efficiency-wage model, we examine the relationship between indeterminacy and unemployment insurance. It is shown that the less unemployment insurance is, the more likely equilibrium is to be indeterminate. Equilibrium can be indeterminate even without externalities or increasing returns, which makes a sharp contrast to the recent literature on indeterminacy. Our result is based on the fact that the no-shirking condition with marginal utility of wealth kept constant is downward sloping when income insurance is not perfect.     

Land and Urban Unemployment

This paper re–examines the effects of expansion of land itself on unemployment and welfare in the mobile–capital Harris–Todaro model with land in agriculture. We show the possibility of immiserization and the harmful effects on employment contrary to the conventional results.     

Unemployment Benefits and Entrepreneurship

Several recent empirical papers show that unemployment benefits crowd out nascent entrepreneurs. In the present paper provide theoretical support in favour of this interesting result. Over fairly general preference patterns we obtain a measure of the opportunity cost of entrepreneurs in the presence of unemployment benefits and derive conditions under which potential entrepreneurs suffer as unemployment benefits rise. We formulate a clear transmission mechanism in the labour market that links unemployment benefits to occupational choice for a group of risk‐averse individuals.     

Immigration and Unemployment*

The wisdom of maintaining high levels of immigration into Australia has been questioned, particularly on the grounds that migration contributes to aggregate unemployment. This paper uses both statistical causality techniques and conventional structural models to investigate the relationship between immigration and unemployment in the post-war period in Australia. The tests find no evidence of any association from migration to unemployment, though there is strong evidence of a significant effect of Australian unemployment on migration. The results indicate that immigration policy should not be dictated by unfounded fears of immigration causing unemployment, at least over the range of previous Australian experience.     

工人离职、失业波动与失业保险文献评述

失业不仅涉及失业波动的影响,还包括在职工人的离队。为减少工人搜寻过程中产生的负外部性,应降低工人的信息成本。失业保险政策的实施又降低了失业工人再就业的激励性,应确立有效的失业保险水平,实现产出与社会福利的最大化。     

Public Consumption and Unemployment

This paper introduces public consumption—hence the size of the public sector—into an efficiency wage model of the labour market. The effect of a simultaneous rise in taxes and public consumption on unemployment is derived. There arises an unambiguous positive relationship between the size of the public sector and equilibrium unemployment if public and private consumption are substitutes and wages are taxed. The impact of taxes on consumption on unemployment, although in general not equal to zero, is ambiguous.     

Unemployment and consumption patterns

In this paper we obtain empirical evidence about the effect of female and male unemployment on household demand of a selection of goods and services. We analyse the percentage of the family income expenditure on a particular group of goods concerning education, domestic services, leisure goods, hotels etc. The impact of several determinants on each group of commodities is estimated using a Tobit specification. The data used for estimation have been taken from The Household Expenditure Survey (1990–91). Our main result is that male and female unemployment has a different impact on the household consumption.     

Unemployment and immiserizing transfer

This paper reexamines the welfare effects of international transfers in a two country model in the presence of unemployment which is generated by an exogenously specified real minimum wage rate. In this context we have found the necessary conditions for the occurrence of paradoxical as well as normal results on employment as well as welfare.I am grateful to an anonymous referee for useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Needless to say, the usual caveat applies.     

Unemployment Invariance

Abstract. This paper provides a critique of the ‘unemployment invariance hypothesis’, according to which the behavior of the labor market, by itself, ensures that the long‐run unemployment rate is independent of the size of the capital stock, productivity and the labor force. In the context of an endogenous growth model, we show that the labor market alone need not contain all the equilibrating mechanisms to ensure unemployment invariance; in particular, other markets may perform part of the equilibrating process as well. By implication, policies that raise the growth path of capital or increase the effective working‐age population may influence the long‐run unemployment rate.     

Unemployment and econometric learning

We apply well-known results of the econometric learning literature to the Mortensen and Pissarides real business cycle model. Agents can always learn the unique rational expectations equilibrium (REE), for all possible well-defined sets of parameter values, by using the minimum-state-variable solution to the model and decreasing gain learning. From this perspective the assumption of rational expectations in the model could be seen as reasonable. But using a parametrisation with UK data, simulations show that the speed of convergence to the REE is slow. This type of learning dampens the cyclical response of unemployment to small structural shocks.     

Unemployment,marriage and divorce

In this article, we examine whether the business cycle plays a role in marriage and divorce. We use data on Spain, since the differences between recession and expansion periods across regions are quite pronounced in that country. We find that the unemployment rate is negatively associated with the marriage rate, pointing to a pro-cyclical evolution of marriage; however, the response of the divorce rate to the business cycle is mixed. Results show the existence of different patterns, depending on geography: divorce rates in coastal regions are pro-cyclical, while in inland regions divorces react to unemployment in a counter-cyclical way.     

用失业指数预警社会失业现象的研究

利用失业指数替代失业率能比较准确、科学地反映社会失业的现实状况。文章通过失业指数计算的设计过程及其计算结果,对失业这一特定的,与经济密切相关的社会现象进行分析研究的基础上,建立了一整套监测、评价和预测未来失业变动状态的失业监测预警体系。     

Unemployment and the 'Labour-management Conspiracy'

We study a model in which management and a union bargain over a rule that will later determine the level of employment, and over a wage. The government then chooses an output or an employment subsidy. An exogenous natural turnover rate in the unionised sector creates unemployment whenever the union wage exceeds the competitive wage. Government intervention can increase both the equilibrium amount of unemployment and worsen the intersectoral allocation of labour, because of the induced change in the endogenous wage. Unemployment weakens but does not eliminate the possibility of a 'labour-management conspiracy'.     

Immigration, Unemployment and Pensions

This paper examines the impact of immigration on a host country with welfare state arrangements that support both the unemployed and the elderly. It is shown that low‐skilled immigration increases the unemployment rate. Furthermore, it harms the low‐skilled native population and benefits the high‐skilled natives and pensioners. Nevertheless, as under competitive labor markets, immigration generates an unambiguous gain for the native population as a whole. However, in contrast to the findings under full employment, this gain can be dampened by an expansion of the pension system.     

Unemployment compensation and aggregate fluctuations

This paper focuses on a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of discretionary changes of unemployment compensation payments on aggregate fluctuations. By means of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, it is shown that unemployment compensation can stabilize consumption on the one hand; however, on the other one, it has adverse effects on unemployment and output. These theoretical results are confirmed by the empirical structural vector autoregressive model. Moreover, the results highlight the importance of real wages in transmitting unemployment benefit shocks on to the macroeconomy. In particular, discretionary changes lead to an increase in real wages, unemployment and consumption while inducing a small decline in output.