Results

Journal article

LSE Public Policy Review:

The Value and Limits of Unemployment Insurance

This paper reviews some recent findings regarding unemployment and unemployment insurance in particular, drawing on comprehensive administrative data from Sweden. Firstly, it explores the value of unemployment insurance,...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Does providing gig workers with unemployment insurance create a moral hazard?

Non-standard workers doing short-term, flexible jobs are a growing segment of the labour force, which poses difficult questions. Is it good policy to provide unemployment insurance to them? Do people engage in gig work b...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Labor Market Insurance Policies in the Twenty-First Century

The COVID-19 crisis was a stress test for unemployment insurance schemes as it involved a sudden and unexpected shutdown of a very large set of activities. This forced countries to introduce, often from scratch, income s...Read more...

Journal article

IMF Economic Review: Forthcoming

Jobless and stuck: youth unemployment and Covid-19 in India

Youth unemployment is a big challenge in developing economies, but there is a limited understanding of the dynamics underlying the rise in unemployment among young workers. This article examines youth unemployment and in...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics: Forthcoming

The long shadow of local decline: birthplace economic adversity and long-term individual outcomes in the UK

Does growing up in a high-economic adversity area matter for individual economic, cultural, and political views? Despite a significant focus upon the effect of birthplace on economic outcomes, there is less evidence on h...Read more...

Journal article

Economie et Statistique :

Recruitment difficulties and firms' characteristics: an analysis of French company data

This article uses a survey conducted in 2019 among companies in the manufacturing sector on recruitment difficulties they may encounter. By linking this information with the companies' income statements, we show that the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor market insurance policies in the XXI century

The recovery from the Covid-19 crisis will force governments to accelerate transformation in their menu of labor market policy tools. The crisis was a stress test for unemployment insurance schemes as it involved a sudde...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firms and inequality when unemployment is high

How important are firms for wage inequality in developing countries where structural unemployment is high? Research focused on contexts close to full employment has suggested a substantial role of firms in labor market i...Read more...

CEP Insights

Crime

What can economics tell us about crime? Economists have discovered that young people who leave school during a recession are more likely to end up in prison than those who enter the labour market when the economy is buoy...Read more...

Journal article

Indian Economic Review:

Unemployment and labour market recovery policies

Evidence shows long-term unemployment (LTU) can have life-long scarring impacts on the future employment and earning prospects of individuals and lead to an overall deterioration in the wellbeing of communities. This art...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Association, Papers & Proceedings:

Unemployment insurance financing as a uniform payroll tax

In the United States, unemployment insurance (UI) is financed by taxes levied on employers. We develop a model to decompose UI taxes into a firing tax component levied on firms that lay off workers, and a uniform payroll...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Should we insure workers or jobs during recessions?

What is the most efficient way to respond to recessions in the labor market? To this question, policymakers on the two sides of the pond gave diametrically opposed answers during the COVID-19 crisis. In the United States...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Residential mobility and unemployment in the UK

The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This pa...Read more...

CEP Insights

Jobs and wages

Most working-age adults depend on earnings from jobs as their main source of income. Understanding the labour market has always been a central part of research at CEP and its predecessor the Centre for Labour Economics....Read more...

CEP Insights

Wellbeing

As societies become richer, they do not become happier. This paradox has led to a growing interest in the science of wellbeing, and how policymakers can evaluate policies in terms of what will improve wellbeing. Economis...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A few Euro more: benefit generosity and the optimal path of unemployment benefits

In this paper, we exploit the provision of higher UB at different points of the unemployment spell to shed light on the relative cost of insurance at different horizons after the job loss. First, we exploit a double cap ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Social insurance policies in turbulent times: short-time work versus unemployment insurance

While the US aggressively extended generosity of unemployment insurance in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, Europe heavily subsidised reductions in hours worked and temporary layoffs through short-time work or similar ...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance: Forthcoming

The Effects of Parental Job Loss on Children’s Outcomes

Severe economic downturns are typically characterized by a high incidence of job losses. The available evidence suggests that job losers suffer short-run earning losses that persist in the long run, are more likely to re...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

A 'lost generation' of young Indian workers urgently needs job opportunities

A year after the pandemic hit India, urban individuals are facing work without pay and long spells of unemployment. Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli say a national-level commitment to provide job opportunities is need...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

City of dreams no more, a year on: worklessness and active labour market policies in urban India

This report provides key findings from a new field survey to assess the long-term impact of Covid-19 on urban workers in low-income areas of India. The survey took place during February and March 2021, just before the s...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Ethnic minorities and the UK labour market

Contrary to the impression given by the Sewell Report, there has been little change in disparities in pay, employment and unemployment among different ethnic groups in the UK over the past 25 years. Indeed, as analysis o...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Parents, Schools and Human Capital Differences Across Countries

This paper studies the contribution of parental influence in accounting for cross-country gaps in human capital achievements. We argue that the cross-country variation in unobserved parental characteristics is at least a...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Trapped Factors and China’s Impact on Global Growth

After a recent increase in Chinese import competition, European firms increased innovation. We present and rationalise these patterns using ‘trapped factors’ at the micro level within a stylised equilibrium model of prod...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

What happened when parents lost their jobs during lockdown?

Many parents had to cope with losing their jobs or part of their income at the same time as they were forced to home school. How did this affect their children's learning and their mental health? Claudia Hupkau, Ingo Isp...Read more...

Blog

The State of Working Britain:

Long-term unemployment and the Covid downturn

With the first signs of rising unemployment under the crisis are beginning to ripple through the labour market, Jonathan Wadsworth examines trends in employment against unemployment, the chances of finding work among tho...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and social mobility

Governments are having to balance short- and long-term interests, and the trade-offs they generate, as they try to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing measures may limit the number of immediate deaths f...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Self-employment in the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 shock is one of the largest economic shocks that has taken place in living memory. The crisis has served to highlight the challenges governments face in extending social insurance to self-employed workers, f...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The labour market

The UK labour market, at first glance, seems to be playing at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Employment (in terms of both levels and rates) is at record highs, yet wage growth has been extraordinarily weak. One view is that thes...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

The causes and consequences of early-adult unemployment: Evidence from cohort data

We here use the employment-history data from the British Cohort Study to calculate an individual's total experience of unemployment from the time they left education up to age 30. We show that, conditional on current une...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Residential mobility in the UK: how distance and local economic conditions drive residential choices

Monica Langella and Alan Manning find that high unemployment in an area induces people to move away, and has an even stronger effect on the attractiveness of that area to potential movers. They also find that younger and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Residential mobility and unemployment in the UK

The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This pa...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

Off EU Go? Brexit, the UK Labour Market and Immigration

Immigration remains a highly antagonistic issue and its purported effects in the labour market are still contestable. Against this background, the UK looks set to undertake a large overhaul of its immigration policy foll...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of jobseekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intensi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economic impacts of constraining home investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy investors in high-amenity places affects local residents. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment: the ‘Swiss Second Home Initiative’, which banned the construction of ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

The persistence of local joblessness

Differences in employment-population ratios across US commuting zones have persisted for many decades. We claim these disparities represent real gaps in economic opportunity for individuals of fixed characteristics. Thes...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

A Macroeconomic Approach to Optimal Unemployment Insurance: Applications

In the United States, unemployment insurance (UI) is more generous when unemployment is high. This paper examines whether this policy is desirable. The optimal UI replacement rate is the Baily-Chetty replacement rate plu...Read more...

Journal article

Social science & medicine:

Ownership and hospital behaviour: Employment and local unemployment

In this paper, we address two issues: i) how hospital employment changes with local unemployment, according to the type of hospital ownership, and ii) whether this relationship changed after the implementation of a pro-c...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Reference-dependent job search: Evidence from Hungary

We propose a model of job search with reference-dependent preferences, with loss aversion relative to recent income (the reference point). In this model, newly unemployed individuals search hard since consumption is belo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Risk-based selection in unemployment insurance: evidence and implications

This paper studies whether adverse selection can rationalize a universal mandate for unemployment insurance (UI). Building on a unique feature of the unemployment policy in Sweden, where workers can opt for supplemental ...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

Who voted for Brexit? A comprehensive district-level analysis

On 23 June 2016, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union (EU). We analyse vote and turnout shares across 380 local authority areas in the United Kingdom. We find that exposure to the EU in terms of immig...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

How Local Are Labor Markets? Evidence from a Spatial Job Search Model

This paper models the optimal search strategies of the unemployed across space to characterize local labor markets. Our methodology allows for linkages between numerous areas, while preserving tractability. We estimate t...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Is modern technology responsible for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. We investigate whether a similar problem afflicts other developed economies, and whether technology is a culprit. W...Read more...

Journal article

IZA Journal of Labor and Development:

Pathways from school to work in the developing world

This paper uses novel micro data from the ILO-STWT surveys to provide evidence on the duration, endpoint, and determinants of the transition from school to work in a sample of 23 low- and middle-income countries around t...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Unemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence

Does rising unemployment really increase domestic violence as many commentators expect? The contribution of this article is to examine how changes in unemployment affect the incidence of domestic abuse. Theory predicts t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Aggregate recruiting intensity

We develop a model of firm dynamics with random search in the labor market where hiring firms exert recruiting effort by spending resources to fill vacancies faster. Consistent with micro evidence, in the model fast-grow...Read more...

CentrePiece article

China shock: the impact on trade and incomes

Is US presidential candidate Donald Trump right when he claims that the Chinese are causing serious damage to American workers? Research by João Paulo Pessoa analyses the impact of the recent massive increase in China’s ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies in Addis Ababa

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of job seekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intens...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International competition and labor market adjustment

How does welfare change in the short- and long-run in high wage countries when integrating with low wage economies like China? Even if consumers benefit from lower prices, there can be significant welfare losses from inc...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Misery and mental health

Mental illness is a far bigger source of human misery than poverty or unemployment, according to research by Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of mi...Read more...

CEP real wages update

Slowing UK Wage Growth

We have previously examined the path of nominal and real wages in the UK (Blanchflower and Machin, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). In that work, we expressed the view that in recent years there has been sufficient slack in the lab...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade and Frictional Unemployment in the Global Economy

We develop a multi-country, multi-sector trade model with labor market frictions and equilibrium unemployment. Trade opening leads to a reduction in unemployment if it raises real wages and reallocates labor towards sect...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Short and long-term effects of unemployment on fertility

Scholars have been examining the relationship between fertility and unemployment for more than a century. Most studies find that fertility falls with unemployment in the short run, but it is not known whether these negat...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Crime scars: can recessions produce career criminals?

Recessions typically raise youth unemployment and leave longterm labour market ‘scars’ on the young people concerned. Research by Brian Bell, Anna Bindler and Stephen Machin finds that they also have a disturbing and sub...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The optimal timing of UI benefits: theory and evidence from Sweden

This paper provides a simple, yet general framework to analyze the optimal time profile of benefits during the unemployment spell. We derive simple sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the insurance value and incenti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The persistence of local joblessness

Local differences in US employment-population ratios and unemployment rates have persisted over many decades. Using decennial census data from 1950-2010, we investigate the reasons for this. The persistence cannot be exp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do more of those in misery suffer from poverty, unemployment or mental illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life...Read more...

CEP election analysis

#ElectionEconomics: The Research Evidence on Key Issues for Voters in the 2015 UK General Election

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigratio...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Real Wages and Living Standards

Real wages and living standards have taken a hard hit in the UK in the recent past. Real wages of the typical (median) UK worker have fallen by almost 10% since 2008 and median family incomes have significantly fallen fo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime scars: recessions and the making of career criminals

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job match...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Falling real wages

The researchers note that there have been historically unprecedented falls in UK real wages since the start of the Great Recession. What’s more, the long US experience of stagnant real wages (median real weekly earnings ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Tackling long-term unemployment

Barbara Petrongolo surveys the research evidence on the effectiveness of the 'sticks' and 'carrots' of active labour market policies....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Unemployment and domestic violence

Contrary to popular belief, the incidence of domestic violence in Britain does not seem to have risen during the recession. But according to research by Jonathan Wadsworth and colleagues, men and women have experienced d...Read more...

Blog

LSE European Politics and Policy Blog:

The state of the UK economy: Diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatment

The UK economy has experienced a prolonged period of weakness over the last five years. John Van Reenen writes that the real problems for the UK are inadequate long-run investment in infrastructure, innovation and human ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The objective benefits of subjective well-being

The aim of this paper is to survey the 'hard' evidence on the effects of subjective well-being. In doing so, we complement the evidence on the determinants of well-being by showing that human well-being also affects outc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A model of aggregate demand and unemployment

We present a static model of aggregate demand and unemployment. The economy has a nonproduced good, a produced good, and labor. Product and labor markets have matching frictions. A general equilibrium is a set of prices,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A general method for valuing non-market goods using wellbeing data: three-stage wellbeing valuation

Subjective wellbeing data is becoming increasingly popular in economics research. The wellbeing valuation approach uses wellbeing data instead of data gleaned from preferences to attach monetary values to non-market good...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment and domestic violence: theory and evidence

Is unemployment the overwhelming determinant of domestic violence that many commentators expect it to be? The contribution of this paper is to examine, theoretically and empirically, how changes in unemployment affect th...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

Unemployment in the Great Recession

This paper studies the responses of unemployment in Germany, the USA and the UK to the Great Recession of 2008-9 using Beveridge curve analysis, and in the entire OECD using other techniques. It is shown that the UK suff...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... The long reach of childhood bullying

Does the fear of being bullied in childhood affect people's resilience to adverse life events they may face in adulthood? The author investigates whether the 'scarring' effects are particularly damaging to individuals wh...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment in the Great Recession

This paper studies the responses of unemployment in Germany, the United States and Britain to the Great Recession of 2008-09 by making use of Beveridge curve analysis, and in the entire OECD with other techniques. It is ...Read more...

CEP US election analysis

Inequality and opportunity: the return of a neglected debate

During this election period many Americans are feeling angry towards the very rich, especially those working in the financial sector, who helped cause the Great Recession and yet were bailed out by the government. Increa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Resilience to Economic Shocks and the Long Reach of Childhood Bullying

This paper investigates whether people?s ability to withstand and adapt to one of the most important economic shocks ? job loss ? is determined early on in childhood. Using nationally representative longitudinal data tha...Read more...

CEP US election analysis

Recession and Recovery: The US Policy Debate on Taxes, Spending and Public Debt

The US economy is still suffering from its most severe recession in seven decades. In the first of a series of US Election Analyses, Ethan Ilzetzki covers the key issue of taxes, spending and public debt, a major point o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Transferable Scars: A Longitudinal Evidence of Psychological Impact of Past Parental Unemployment on Adolescents in the United Kingdom

Using a longitudinal data of British youths, this paper explores the consequences of past parental unemployment on the current happiness and self-esteem of the children. We find that a past unemployment spell of the fath...Read more...

CEP report

Fiscal consolidation during a depression

In 2009-10, the UK's budget deficit was about 11 per cent of GDP. A credible plan for fiscal consolidation was introduced in the UK over the fiscal years 2011-12 to 2016-17. In this paper, we assess the impact of the sca...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Jobs in a recession

This article is based on a paper that models unemployment as the result of matching frictions and job rationing. Job rationing is a shortage of jobs arising naturally in an economic equilibrium from the combination of so...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Preferential Trade Agreements and the Labor Market

Labor market consequences are at the forefront of most debates on the merits of trade liberalization. Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have become the primary form of trade liberalization in most countries, and sever...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fiscal Multipliers over the Business Cycle

This paper illustrates why fiscal policy becomes more effective as unemployment rises in recessions. The theory is based on the equilibrium unemployment model of Michaillat (forthcoming), in which jobs are rationed in re...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

Apprenticeship Policy in England: Increasing Skills versus Boosting Young People's Job Prospects

Successive British governments have committed substantial public resources to apprentice training, but far too few young people benefit and not enough high value skills have been developed. That is the central conclusion...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Young people without qualifications: how 'headline numbers' shape policy and aspiration

England's most widely used indicator of young people's education and labour market status is the NEET category - 'not in education, employment or training'. Making comparisons with how France and Germany measure school l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Optimal Unemployment Insurance Over the Business Cycle

This paper characterizes optimal unemployment insurance (UI) over the business cycle using a model of equilibrium unemployment in which jobs are rationed in recession. It offers a simple optimal UI formula that can be ap...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Role of Worker Flows in the Dynamics and Distribution of UK Unemployment

Unemployment varies substantially over time and across subgroups of the labour market. Worker flows among labour market states act as key determinants of this variation. We examine how the structure of unemployment acros...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Youth unemployment

The rise in joblessness among young people began long before the recession - Barbara Petrongolo and John Van Reenen consider potential explanations....Read more...

Book

Combatting Unemployment
IZA Prize in Labor Economics

Combatting Unemployment is a collection of key papers from seminal labour economists Richard Layard and Stephen J. Nickell. The authors received the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2008 for their path-breaking work o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and Labor Market Outcomes

This paper reviews a new framework for analyzing the interrelationship between inequality, unemployment, labor market frictions, and foreign trade. This framework emphasizes firm heterogeneity and search and matching fri...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Matching Frictions Explain Unemployment? Not in Bad Times

This paper models unemployment as the result of matching frictions and job rationing. Job rationing is a shortage of jobs arising naturally in an economic equilibrium from the combination of some wage rigidity and dimini...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Jobs in the recession

The recession of 2008-09 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the previous post-war recessions, yet there has been a relatively low loss of employment, at least so far. Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wads...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The UK labour market and the 2008 - 2009 recession

The recession of 2008-2009 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the other post-war recessions. Nevertheless, employment rates remained higher than might have been expected given the experience of p...Read more...

CEP election analysis

CEP Election Analysis 2010 - The complete Series, discussing research on some of the key policy battlegrounds of the 2010 General Election

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CEP election analysis

Jobs and Youth Unemployment: It's bad, but not as bad as you might think

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Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The long-term effects of job search requirements: Evidence from the UK JSA reform

This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Inequality and Unemployment in a Global Economy

This paper develops a new framework for examining the distributional consequences of international trade that incorporates firm and worker heterogeneity, search and matching frictions in the labor market, and screening o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment Insurance and Cultural Transmission: Theory and Application to European Unemployment

This paper emphasizes the two-way causality between the provision of unemployment insurance and the cultural transmission of work ethic. Values affect the size of the moral-hazard problem and, hence, the policy to be imp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Macroeconomic Role of Unemployment Compensation

The standard motivation for unemployment compensation is consumption smoothing and most papers in the literature have analyzed trade-offs involving consumption smoothing and moral hazard. This paper shows how such policy...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Resurrecting the Participation Margin

This paper considers a real business cycle model with search frictions in the labor market and labor supply which is elastic along the participation margin. Previous authors have found that such models generate counterfa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Ins and Outs of European Unemployment

In this paper we study the contribution of inflows and outflows to the dynamics of unemployment in three European countries, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. We compare performance in these three countries making us...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the Extent of Re-Entitlement Effects in Unemployment Compensation

A dynamic labor matching economy is presented, in which the unemployed are either entitled to unemployment insurance (UI) or unemployment assistance (UA), and the employees are either eligible for UI or UA upon future se...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Market Institutions Around the World

This paper documents the large cross-country differences in labor institutions that make them a candidate explanatory factor for the divergent economic performance of countries and reviews what economists have learned ab...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Are the Long-Term Effects of UI? Evidence from the UK JSA Reform

This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Unemployment Volatility Puzzle: Is Wage Stickiness the Answer?

I study the cyclical behavior of an equilibrium search model with endogenous job creation and destruction, with focus on the model’s failure to match the observed cyclical volatility of unemployment. Job creation in the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Creative Destruction with On-the-Job Search

This paper is about the labour market consequences of creative destruction with on-the-job search. We consider a matching model in an economy with embodied technological progress and show that its dynamics are profoundly...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Incentives in Competitive Search Equilibrium

This paper analyses the interaction between internal agency problems within firms and external search frictions when workers have private information. We show that the allocation of resources is determined by a modified ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Shimer Puzzle and the Correct Identification of Productivity Shocks

Shimer (2005a) claims that the Mortensen-Pissarides search model of unemployment lacks an ampiflication mechanism because it cannot generate the observed business cycle fluctuations in unemployment given labor productivi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity, Aggregate Demand and Unemployment Fluctuations

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the cyclical behavior of US unemployment that poses a challenge to standard search and matching models. The correlation between cyclical unemployment and the cyclical compone...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Beveridge Curve

The Beveridge curve depicts a negative relationship between unemployed workers and job vacancies, a robust finding across countries. The position of the economy on the curve gives an idea as to the state of the labour ma...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Destruction, Job Creation and Unemployment in Transition Countries: What Can We Learn?

Sixteen years into the transition, the problem of high joblessness has not been solved. Of the three explanations commonly discussed (i.e. ongoing reallocation; finished reallocation with redundant labour; wrong choice o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment and Hours of Work: The North Atlantic Divide Revisited

I examine the dynamic evolutions of unemployment, hours of work and the service share since the war in the United States and Europe. The theoretical model brings together all three and emphasizes technological growth. Co...Read more...

Book

Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

This book aims to provide a basis for better unemployment policy: showing how the lessons learned from experience and theory can be applied to greatly reduce the waste and misery of high unemployment. The book surveys th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

You Can't Always Get What You Want: the Impact of the Jobseeker's Allowance

In 1996 the UK made major changes to its welfare system for the support of the unemployed with the introduction of the Jobseeker’s Allowance. This tightened the work search requirements needed for eligibility for benefit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Capital Mobility and Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries

We use a panel of 20 OECD countries over a 30-year period to estimate the implications of international capital mobility for unemployment. We find that the increase in capital flows since the mid1980s has contributed to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Security and Job Protection

We construct indicators of the perception of job security for various types of jobs in 12 European countries using individual data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We then consider the relation between...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity Growth and Employment: Theory and Panel Estimates

Theoretical predictions of the effect of TFP growth on employment are ambiguous, and depend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs. We estimate a model for employment, wages and investment with an ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Short Job Tenures and Firing Taxes in the Search Theory of Unemployment

This paper studies the effects of firing taxes on the job destruction rate, when probation period - or temporary contract - policies are implemented in an otherwise exogenous job separation search model. It is shown that...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Public Enterprises and Labor Market Performance

This paper shows that state control of some industries may have contributed to the increase in European unemployment from the 1970s to the early 1990s. We develop a simple model with both publicly-run and privately-run e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Gaps in Unemployment Rates in OECD Countries

There is an enormous literature on gender gaps in pay and labour market participation but virtually no literature on gender gaps in unemployment rates. Although there are some countries in which there is essentially no g...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment in Britain: A European Success Story

Unemployment in Britain has fallen from high European-style levels to US levels. I argue that the key reasons are first the reform of monetary policy, in 1993 with the adoption of inflation targeting and in 1997 with the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Picture of European Unemployment: Success and Failure.

Average unemployment in Europe today is relatively high compared with OECD countries outside Europe. The majority of countries in Europe today have lower unemployment than any OECD country outside Europe, including the U...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Scale Effects in Markets with Search

Reduced-form tests of scale effects in markets with search, run when aggregate matching functions are estimated, may miss important scale effects at the micro level, because of the reactions of job searchers. A semi-stru...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Test Between Unemployment Theories Using Matching Data

This paper tests whether aggregate matching is consistent with unemployment being mainly due to search frictions or due to job queues. Using U.K. data and correcting for temporal aggregation bias, estimates of the random...Read more...

Book

The Wage Curve

The Wage Curve casts doubt on some of the most important ideas in macroeconomics, labor economics, and regional economics. According to macroeconomic orthodoxy, there is a relationship between unemployment and the ra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labour Market Performance and Start-Up Costs: OECD Evidence

This paper is intended to make a contribution to the empirical literature explaining the rise of unemployment since the 1970s in western economies by means of interactions between shocks and institutions. The contributio...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Consumption and Savings with Unemployment Risk: Implications for Optimal Employment Contracts

This paper derives optimal employment contracts when workers are risk averse and there are employment and unemployment risks. Without income insurance, consumption rises during employment and falls during unemployment. O...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spanish Unemployment Persistence and the Ladder Effect

This paper aims to examine unemployment persistence in Spain by the soûcalled 'ladder' effect. This arises when highly-skilled workers who do not find a job matching their skills accept jobs which previously were occup...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Company Start-Up Costs and Employment

I study the role of company start-up costs for employment performance. The model is search equilibrium with a new concept for firms. Agents have an innate managerial ability and make a career choice to become either mana...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Beveridge Curve, Unemployment and Wages in the OECD from the 1960s to the 1990s - Preliminary Version

This paper is an empirical analysis of unemployment patterns in the OECD countries from the 1960s to the 1990s, looking at the Beveridge Curves, real wages as well as unemployment directly. Our results indicate the follo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Externalities in the Matching of Workers and Firms in Britain

We provide empirical evidence on the nature of spatial externalities in a matching model for the UK. We use a monthly panel of outflows, unemployment and vacancy stocks data from the registers at Jobcentres in the UK; th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Picture of Job Insecurity Facing British Men

This paper considers three aspects of the job insecurity facing British men in the last two decades. The probability of becoming unemployed, the costs of unemployment in terms of real wages losses and the probability tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment Dynamics, Duration and Equilibrium: Evidence from Britain

This paper challenges the consensus on the nature of unemployment dynamics in Britain. We show that the argument that changes in unemployment arise mostly from changes in the duration of unemployment (rather than in the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage Equations, Wage Curves and All That

This paper is concerned with the relationship between wages and unemployment. Using UK regions and individuals as the basis for our analysis, the following questions are investigated. First, is the wage equation a relati...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fixed-Term Contracts and Unemployment: An Efficiency Wage Analysis

During the 1980s, many European countries introduced fixed-term contracts to fight high and persistent levels of unemployment. Although these contracts have been widely used, unemployment has remained about the same afte...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Relative Economic Importance of Academic, Psychological and Behavioural Attributes Developed on Chilhood

This paper makes use of the substantial information about the psychological and behavioural development of children by age ten in the 1970 Cohort to predict later, economic outcomes, namely qualifications, employment and...Read more...

Book

Tackling Inequality

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists, whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad.  This book contains his most influential articles on the subject of u...Read more...

Book

Tackling Unemployment

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad. This book contains his most influential articles on unemployment. It is publ...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Job creation and job destruction in the theory of unemployment

In this paper we model a job-specific shock process in the matching model of unemployment with non-cooperative wage behaviour. We obtain endogenous job creation and job destruction processes and study their properties. W...Read more...