Layoffs,recalls and unemployment duration: evidence from Sweden

The question addressed in this paper is whether the possibility of exit from unemployment to the previous employer affects the duration of unemployment spells in Sweden. The empirical analysis is performed using an employee–employer dataset that includes a number of enterprise characteristics and provides information on individual tenure. The econometric approach employs estimation of a competing risk duration model to distinguish between exits to the previous employer and exits to a new job. The findings suggest that greater tenure raises the risk of transition to the previous employer, while high education levels increase the risk of obtaining a new job. Moreover, the impact of benefit exhaustion is observed only for transitions to new employment.     

Renewable energy consumption and unemployment: evidence from a sample of 80 countries and nonlinear estimates

This article contributes to the discussion on the dynamic nexus of renewable energy consumption and unemployment by incorporating nonlinear cointegration and causality analysis. Using a sample of 80 countries spanning the period 1990–2013 and the advanced generation of unit root, cointegration and nonlinear Granger causality methodological approaches in panel data, we obtain mixed results about the impact of renewable energy consumption on unemployment. Although the total findings document a positive impact of renewable energy consumption on unemployment, disaggregated data across specific regions, such as Asia and Latin America, highlight the favourable effect on unemployment, implying that the effect of renewable energy consumption on jobs creation depends on the cost of adopting renewable energy technologies and energy efficiencies that seem to vary across the regions under investigation.     

Markov switching in disaggregate unemployment rates

We develop a dynamic factor model with Markov switching to examine secular and business cycle fluctuations in the U.S. unemployment rates. We extract the common dynamics amongst unemployment rates disaggregated for 7 age groups. The framework allows analysis of the contribution of demographic factors to secular changes in unemployment rates. In addition, it allows examination of the separate contribution of changes due to asymmetric business cycle fluctuations. We find strong evidence in favor of the common factor and of the switching between high and low unemployment rate regimes. We also find that demographic adjustments can account for a great deal of secular changes in the unemployment rates, particularly the abrupt increase in the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent decrease in the last 18 years. First Version Received: December 2000/Final Version Received: June 2001     

The Boom and the Slump: a Causal Account of the 1990s/2000s and the 1920s/1930s

Not all booms are alike, nor are slumps. The institutions and the shocks are never exactly the same. Yet the late 1990s boom, and its unwinding, strikingly parallel the boom of the roaring 1920s, the deep decline into the early 1930s andonly a partial rebound. Both experiences began with an investment boom, then a downturn in investment while consumption held up. Economic activity closely tracked investment. The realizations of extraordinary productivity gains were present in the problematic and incomplete recovery of the 1930s, which suggests the possibility that return to the medium‐term natural rate of unemployment may be a rather long process. I expect the rest of the decade to resemble the rest of the 1930s – a limited recovery with investment and employment below historical norms.     

Public expenditures and the unemployment rate in the American states: panel evidence

We reexamine the Unemployment Rate (UR) – government expenditure nexus in a panel of 50 State and Local Governments (SLGs) over the period 1977–2006 to provide new pre-recession empirical evidence that helps put the expectations on the effects of the federal relief to SLGs in a broader context. We found that: (1) per capita real public spending (total and capital, assistance and subsidies, wages and salaries, and social insurance categories) was part of a cointegrating relationship with UR and real per capita state personal income. (2) With the exception of social insurance, other spending variables, when statistically significant, actually had a depressing effect on UR. The magnitude of this effect, however, was generally small. UR was most sensitive to increases in wages and salaries. (3) Long-term causality analysis based on panel error-correction coefficients provided consistent evidence of a causal effect from spending to UR, but less consistent evidence of such effect in the opposite direction. Social insurance, however, drove UR. (4) The size of the error-correction coefficients suggested a slow response of UR to deviations from the cointegrating relationship. (5) The marginal effect of spending on UR increased with the amount of the federal grants received. Our results suggest that public spending may not serve as a quick fix in relation to UR. They also seem to favour allocation of the federal funds to wage and salaries and assistance and subsidies, but not to capital and social insurance expenditures to lower UR.     

Unemployment and Welfare Participation in a Structural VAR: Rethinking the 1990s in the United States

A report by the Council of Economic Advisers (1997 Council of Economic Advisers. May 1997. “Explaining the decline in welfare receipt, 1993–1996”. May, Washington, DC Executive Office of the President [Google Scholar]) is the first of a group of studies, known as caseload studies, analysing the relationship between the US unemployment rate and the welfare participation rate, with special regard to the 1990s. We examine this relationship in a structural VAR model over the period of 1960–2000 and find that the unemployment rate does not help to predict the welfare participation rate while the converse is more likely to hold. These results are robust to state and year heterogeneity over a period of unprecedented positive correlation between unemployment and welfare participation, i.e. 1990–1998. Further, we find that a shock to the welfare participation rate has a contemporaneous impact on the unemployment rate while the converse is less likely to hold. The main conclusion is that several caseload studies may be based on the wrong assumption that the unemployment rate is an exogenous explanatory variable of the welfare participation rate.     

Out-of-sample forecasting of the Canadian unemployment rates using univariate models

This article investigates the out-of-sample forecasting performance of some linear and nonlinear univariate time series models on the monthly seasonally adjusted Canadian unemployment rates during the 1980–2013 period. The findings reveal that nonlinear time series models better capture the asymmetry present in the unemployment rate series at short and long forecast horizons.     

Women's unemployment during transition Evidence from Czech and Slovak micro-data

We analyse women’s weekly probabilities of leaving unemployment in the Czech and Slovak Republics (CR and SR) in order to investigate three questions: 1) Why are unemployment rates much lower in the CR than the SR?; 2) Does the unemployment compensation scheme (UCS) substantially lengthen unemploy-mentspells?; and 3) Why are women’s unemployment rates higher than men’s? We find that differences in the behaviour of the individuals, employers and institutions in the SR and CR (as measured by differences in coefficients) play a larger role in determining the CR’s shorter female unemployment spells than do differences in measured demand and demographic variables. The UCS has only a moderate effect on duration and its impact is greater in the CR. The differences between men’s and women’s spells (in each republic) are explained more by differences in coefficients than by differences in observed characteristics. JEL classification: C41, H53, J23, J64, O15, P2.     

Emigration intentions of Roma: evidence from Central and South-East Europe

The Roma constitute the largest, poorest and youngest ethnic minority group in Europe. Over the last few years, they have attracted unprecedented attention with the fear of massive waves of emigrants to Western European countries. Using unique comparative data from 12 Central and South-East European countries, we study the pattern and determinants of Roma emigration intentions. We find that plans to go abroad are more frequent among Roma compared to non-Roma, but the ethnic gap in emigration intentions is not explained by the more disadvantaged characteristics of Roma compared to non-Roma. Among the Roma population, potential emigrants are more educated and wealthier on average. Finally, ethnic discrimination is a very influential factor that explains the intentions to emigrate within the Roma population.     

Real and perceived losses from unemployment: a cross-country study

This article compares the Unemployment Rate (UR) as a measure of inefficiency with several other potential measures across 18 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Results show that the UR is not a very good measure of relative inefficiency between countries, it overestimates the number of individuals who would get jobs if the market is clear, the Dead Weight Losses (DWLs) of UR are remarkably low even in high unemployment countries and the aggregate perceived monetary losses by the unemployed as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are also uniformly low, although inframarginal individuals in some countries may perceive their losses to be high.     

The effect of shocks to labour market flows on unemployment and participation rates

This article presents an analysis of labour market dynamics, in particular of flows in the labour market and how they interact and affect the evolution of unemployment rates and participation rates, the two main indicators of labour market performance. Our analysis has two special features. First, apart from the two labour market states – employment and unemployment – we consider a third state – out of the labour force. Second, we study net rather than gross flows, where net refers to the balance of flows between any two labour market states. Distinguishing a third state is important because the labour market flows to and from that state are quantitatively important. Focusing on net flows simplifies the complexity of interactions between the flows and allows us to perform a dynamic analysis in a structural vector-autoregression framework. We find that a shock to the net flow from unemployment to employment drives the unemployment rate and the participation rate in opposite directions while a shock to the net flow from not in the labour force to unemployment drives the rates in the same direction.     

马克思失业理论与西方主流失业理论:当代中国失业问题的解读

当代中国日益严重的失业问题引起理论界的众说纷纭.西方主流失业理论与马克思失业理论相比,后者对解读当代中国的失业问题具有根本性、基础性的现实指导意义.根据马克思失业理论,资本积累仍是当代中国失业问题的根源.然而发展中的中国,既要发挥资本积累的优越性,又要让失业者适当分享资本积累的成果,并尽快提高其素质和能力,成为具有全球竞争力的新型劳动者,以此,才能解决当代中国的失业问题.     

Suicide mortality,long-term unemployment,and labor-market policies: Evidence from European countries

Using data from 25 EU countries spanning the period 1999–2017, this paper examines the relationship between working-age suicides and changes in long-term unemployment and tests for mitigating effects through the implementation of labor-market policies. The estimates suggest higher suicide risks following a rising rate of long-term unemployment. Passive support policies have a suicide-decreasing impact. Among active policies, a significant suicide-decreasing effect is found for training and direct job creation. The results have important policy implications in that they suggest that strong commitment of governments to passive or to certain types of active labor-market policies can, on average, contribute to social stability and the welfare of populations.     

Taxation and household portfolio composition: US evidence from the 1980s and 1990s

This paper explores the relationship between household marginal income tax rates, the set of financial assets that households own, and the portfolio shares accounted for by each of these assets. It analyzes data from the 1983, 1989, 1992, 1995, and 1998 Surveys of Consumer Finances and develops a new algorithm for imputing federal marginal tax rates to households in these surveys. The empirical findings suggest that marginal tax rates have important effects on asset allocation decisions. The probability that a household owns tax-advantaged assets, such as tax-exempt bonds or assets held in tax-deferred accounts, is positively related to its tax rate on ordinary income. In addition, the portfolio share invested in corporate stock, which is taxed less heavily than interest bearing assets, is increasing in the household’s ordinary income tax rate. Holdings of heavily taxed assets, such as interest-bearing accounts, decline as a share of wealth as a household’s marginal tax rate increases.     

The fading 1990s in Japan: Driving forces behind the unemployment upsurge

This paper sheds new light on the causes of the unemployment upsurge in Japan during the “fading 1990s”, an unprecedented period of structural crisis. We estimate a labor market model and identify the main macroeconomic determinants of labor demand and labor supply decisions in the last decades. We then conduct dynamic simulations and assess the relative contribution of these determinants to the evolution of unemployment from 1990 to 2002. Beyond the leading role exerted by the decline in productivity growth, we find the active and expansionary measures undertaken by the government had an overall negative effect on the labor market.     

The college-to-work transition during the 1990s: evidence from Sweden

This article analyses the time it takes for Swedish college graduates to start a full time job that lasts for 6 months or more. The focus is on the transition over time during the period 1991 to 1999. This period covers both upturns and downturns of the business cycle, providing a unique opportunity to consider the importance of the timing of graduation. The results show that the risk of unemployment and the unemployment duration have varied considerably with the business cycle, both within and between cohorts. For example, the field of education is of more importance for the outcomes during recessions. Further, the relative risk of unemployment has decreased over time for individuals with the highest degree of education whereas the unemployment duration has increased, indicating that the selection into unemployment for this group may have changed over time. This is interesting, not least in the light of the sharp expansion of the higher educational system during the study period.     

Estimating the relationship between labour market tightness,unemployment insurance benefits and union election activity

Using detailed data from the US National Labor Relations Board, we find labour market tightness, defined as the ratio of job vacancies to the number of unemployed, has a positive relationship with the likelihood of voting in favour of union representation. Specifically, a 1 SD increase in labour market tightness increases Vote Share in favour and the likelihood of union certification by roughly 1.5% and 3%, respectively. We also find that length of unemployment insurance benefits has a positive relationship with Vote Share in favour. Taken together, these results suggest that workers are more comfortable engaging in pro-union election behaviours when exogenous conditions, like labour market tightness and unemployment insurance benefit duration, shift in a way that more favourably insulates them from unemployment and income risk.     

Crime rates,male youth unemployment and real income in Australia: evidence from Granger causality tests

This article applies Granger causality tests to examine the relationship between seven different categories of property crime and violent crime against the person, male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings in Australia from 1964 to 2001 within a cointegration and vector error correction framework. It is found that fraud, homicide and motor vehicle theft are cointegrated with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings. However, there is no evidence of a long-run relationship between either break and enter, robbery, serious assault or stealing with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings.     

Wage,productivity and unemployment: microeconomics theory and macroeconomics data

We confront microeconomics theory with macroeconomics data. Unemployment results from two main micro-level decisions of workers and firms. Most of the efficiency wage and bargaining theories predict that over the business cycle, unemployment falls below its natural rate when the worker’s real wage exceeds the reservation wage. However, these theories have weak empirical support. Firm’s decision predicts that when the worker’s real wage exceeds the marginal product of labour (MPL), unemployment increases above its natural rate. Accounting for this microeconomic decision helps explain almost all the fluctuations of US unemployment.     

Threshold nonlinearities in unemployment rates: further evidence for the UK and G3 economies

The paper appraises the in-sample and out-of-sample adequacy of linear AR and nonlinear SETAR models of unemployment rates for Germany, Japan, the UK and the US. Tests are reported for the presence and specification of threshold nonlinearities, SETAR model estimates, limiting dynamic properties and residual diagnostics, and out-of-sample forecasting performance. In-sample, threshold non-linearities are confirmed to be strongly present for the UK, US and Germany, and more marginally so for Japan. Out-of-sample, excepting Japan, SETAR models provide superior onestep-ahead forecast on RMSE grounds, most notably for the US. Final tests indicate that these models exhibit predictive accuracy in the sense of parameter and residual variance stability, implying the potential for exploitation of such nonlinearity in official forecasting.