Labour Market Policy And Unemployment

This second volume from the Swedish Trade Union Research Institute looks at recent research on labor market policies. The question of the extent of government intervention is examined between the two extremes of the effects of unrestricted and unhampered markets on the one hand, and the old Keynesian view of benevolent governments on the other. Job creation policies and labor market programs both in Europe and the United States are reviewed and cost-benefit rules for job-training programs are proposed. Also discussed are general issues concerning unemployment insurance and incentives.

This book presents the proceedings of a conference on labour markets. It advances thinking on new policy measures, such as active labour market policies and measures to "make work pay".

There is substantial disagreement among policy-makers about how governments should respond to the problem of high unemployment. Thus far there has been little, if any, systematic attempt to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the main unemployment policies available to governments in market economies. Individual policy recommendations are usually made in isolation from one another. This book attempts to provide a balanced assessment of the various policy options, including the following: demand management versus supply-side policy, subsidizing employment and training, restructuring labour market regulations, and reforming the welfare state. The book also examines the political economy of unemployment policy and the effect of this policy on productivity growth.

The United States lacks a comprehensive and coordinated labor market policy. The components of U.S. labor market policy are derived from the activities and programs of many different agencies and Congressional committees. In addition to the Department of Labor, major aspects of labor market policy are sponsored by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education, and the Social Security and Veterans Administrations. There is no centralized authority over these various activities and there is no one administrative agency responsible for the implementation of active labor market policies. This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of U.S. labor market policies that are presented and social and political barriers to policy impact are discussed.

This book argues that unemployment is symptomatic of an inherently inefficient labour market founded on structured inequalities of locality, sex, race and age. It provides a multidisciplinary explanation of why unemployment has been a continuing crisis, suitable for students in many disciplines.

This book examines the effectiveness of active labour market policies and their contribution to the prevention of social exclusion. The evaluation studies reported in this volume focus on two aspects of active labour market policies that have been relatively neglected in previous research and merit special attention. The first part of the book deals with aggregate impact analysis. Using examples from France, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain, the contributors attempt to estimate the impact of active labour market policies on the transition from unemployment to employment using aggregate data at the regional level. Although quantitative in nature, these contributions take into account qualitative aspects such as the socio-economic context of the countries concerned and the structure of active labour market policies. The book then focuses on implementation issues and includes implementation studies carried out in Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden. The qualitative element plays a far more important role in these contributions which rely on case studies and surveys in addition to statistical data.

Using a sample of 97 countries spanning the period 1980?2008, we estimate that financial crises have a large negative impact on unemployment in the short term, but that this effect rapidly disappears in the medium term in countries with flexible labor market institutions, whereas the impact of financial crises is less pronounced but more persistent in countries with more rigid labor market institutions. These effects are even larger for youth unemployment in the short term and long-term unemployment in the medium term. Conversely, large upfront, or gradual but significant, comprehensive labor market policies have a positive impact on unemployment, albeit only in the medium term.

Labour markets within countries vary in their performance. Some regions suffer from labour shortages, while others are faced with high unemployment figures. Furthermore structure and qualification of the workforce differs, and real wage patterns show diverging pictures between and within regions. Based on these empirical facts this study sheds some light on the wage unemployment relation and the impact active labour market policies has on this. Basic assumption is that market imperfections lead to unemployment in regional labour markets, partly owing to region-specific wage structures, and that active labour market policies can alleviate this problem. Five aspects are focused: The interaction of regional unemployment and wages based on the wage curve, the question how qualification patterns influence the regional wage level, the effectiveness of regional labour market policies, the impact of these policies on regional wage-setting, and the impact of employment service performance on real wages.

Unemployment in Theory and Practice examines the effectiveness of current policies in the battle against unemployment. It uses a variety of country case studies to analyse the range of potential causes of and cures for unemployment and analyses the complex nature of labour markets.