The ideology of unemployment

Summary The views on unemployment, its significance, its causes and its possible remedies are manifold and ideologically loaded. The author's plea is for a cool approach, that is, for the building and the testing of empirical models. But he also enumerates a number of ideological elements in the art of model building; in particular the influence of profits is difficult to ascertain quantitively. This leads to beliefs and to room for ideology. The author singles out five elasticities that he considers to be key parameters; research work should concentrate on estimating these five elasticities.