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The article analyses the interrelation between unemployment and new business formation using panel data for a large cross-section of countries. We find robust evidence for a positive influence of unemployment, domestic credit to the private sector and business-friendly regulation on new business formation. Our examination does, however, indicate no support for the view that new business formation significantly reduces national unemployment rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper delves into the recent events that led to the formation of the housing bubble in Spain and the resulting structural change that is arguably needed to put the economy back into the right track. For this purpose, we calibrate a model with different equilibria descriptive of the labor markets in Spain and France, where the unemployment rates went from the same initial spot to very different levels. In addition to this, we run a counterfactual analysis that throws some more light on the performance of the Spanish labor market and the housing bubble. Our results suggest that the unemployment rate in Spain has jumped to much higher levels while switching between equilibria or, what is the same, because of structural change. Moreover, our counterfactuals indicate that, first, there has been an important misdirection of resources into the construction industry mainly fueled by excessively low real interest rates and, second, the Spanish labor reform has fallen short of its own goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors present a version of the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model of unemployment that is accessible to undergraduates and preserve the dynamic structure of the original model. The model is solvable in closed form using basic algebra and admits a graphical representation useful for illustrating a variety of comparative statics. They show how to use the model to teach the effects of labor market policies, advancements in Internet technology, and labor market dynamics. Supplementary materials such as teaching tips, a classroom experiment, and online resources including a JavaScript-based simulation tool, U.S. data used to make figures, and practice problems are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature linking housing and professional choices focuses on the supply side of the labour market (the search for a job as employee), thus considering the unemployment rate as the only measure of labour market outcomes. Indeed, the usually neglected link between homeownership and entrepreneurship is equally important for assessing labour market performance. This empirical article represents one of the first attempts to test the interplay between homeownership and (new) entrepreneurs. Effectively, using a panel data analysis in Italy, we find a first empirical evidence of a positive and bidirectional interaction between homeownership and new entrepreneurs (precisely, small businesses and the self-employed). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to analyse determinants of unemployment spells and exit destinations in Romania using a competing-risks framework. The empirical analysis is based on a nationally representative data-set of 2,376,253 unemployment spells gathered from the National Agency of Employment Romania. The effect of different covariates on the duration of unemployment spells and exit destinations is estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article outlines the need to identify appropriate explanations for various acts of deviant behaviour, mental illness and violent reactions in Romanian contemporary society which is facing a crisis of values and character. The objective of the article is to provide empirical evidence and raise awareness regarding the relationship between crime and socioeconomic factors in Romania over the period 1990–2014, based on statistics for testing co-integration theory and causal relationships. Specifically, the proposed analysis intends to capture the complexity of socioeconomic pressures on individuals and to clarify the ways in which the vitiation of modern society represents a manifestation of implemented economic mechanisms. By using data related to income, unemployment, inflation, inequality, development, education and population density as socioeconomic factors and also data on crime divided by region and type, the article supports the hypothesis of significant causality between socioeconomic factors and crime. Two directions can be considered for revealing the general result of the proposed analysis: one is that an increase in income inequality has a strong and robust effect regarding crime rates rising, and the second reveals that the place of residence is essential, the urban agglomeration being a generating factor for crime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I identify which theoretical model (random, stock–flow, or job queuing) best describes the matching mechanism in the labour market in Poland. The purpose of this work is to formulate policy recommendations aimed at increasing the number of matches. I use monthly registered unemployment data for the period January 1999–June 2013 and econometrically correct for temporal aggregation bias in the data. I extend known solutions and apply them directly to a job queuing model. Job seekers (from the pool) seek work among old and new job posts, but only a small fraction of the newly unemployed individuals find work quickly. Vacancies are the driving force in aggregate hiring, but the inflow is more important than the stock. The random model has greater explanatory power, although the results do not negate the non-random model. Hence, better information and higher inflows (especially of job offers) should facilitate matching. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we study the importance of product market demand and search frictions for hiring. We use a search-matching model with imperfect competition in the product market to derive an equation for total hiring in a local labour market, and estimate it on Swedish panel data. If product markets are imperfectly competitive, product demand shocks should have a direct effect on employment for given levels of prices and wages. Our main finding is that product demand has such a direct effect on hiring. This highlights the importance of taking imperfect competition in the product market into account in studies of employment dynamics and hiring. We also find that, for given levels of prices, wages, and product demand, the number of unemployed workers in a local labour market has a positive effect on hiring, suggesting that search frictions matter. Quantitatively, product demand shocks seem to be more important for understanding the variation in hiring than shocks to the number of unemployed workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We analyse the reservation wages of first- and second-generation migrants, based on rich survey data of the unemployed in Germany. Our results confirm the hypothesis that reservation wages increase over migrant generations and over time, suggesting that the mobility benefit of immigration may be limited in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we use 22 years of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and information on plant closures to investigate the effects of unemployment on four indicators of unhealthy lifestyles: diet, alcohol consumption, smoking and (a lack of) physical activity. In contrast to much of the existing literature, which unlike our analysis is unable to assess causality, our results provide little evidence that unemployment gives rise to unhealthy lifestyles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our article revisits the Okun relationship between observed unemployment rates and output gaps. We include in the relationship the effect of labour market institutions as well as age and gender effects. Our empirical analysis is based on 20 OECD countries over the period 1985–2013. We find that the share of temporary workers (which includes a high and rising share of young workers) played a crucial role in explaining changes in the Okun coefficient (the impact of the output gap on the unemployment rate) over time. The Okun coefficient is not only different for young, prime-age and older workers but also it decreases with age. From a policy perspective, it follows that an increase in economic growth will not only have the desired outcome of reducing the overall unemployment rate but it will also have the distributional effect of lowering youth unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether the choice of a business cycle measure affects estimates of the cyclicality of labour market flows. We exploit precise administrative data on individual labour market transitions and study the association of alternative business cycle measures with individual transitions between employment and unemployment. We find indeed substantial heterogeneities across business cycle indicators that may have affected the results of prior studies on labour market transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses a randomized controlled trial to show that positive earnings effects of a labour market programme can be caused by either a faster return to employment together with a lowering of reservation wages or a more moderate return to employment together with an increase in reservation wages. I model wages and unemployment duration simultaneously in a hazard framework allowing for unobserved heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using repeated cross-section annual data for Peru spanning 2002–2011 and non-parametric duration analysis, our estimates support the hypothesis that both stay in and exit from poverty (non-poverty) depends on the duration and sequence of poverty (non-poverty) spells. We find that longer periods in poverty reduce the probability of leaving poverty and, conversely, longer periods spent out of poverty reduce the chance of falling back into poverty. Also, we show that, at least in the last decade (of high economic growth), the probability of staying in poverty was lower than staying in non-poverty and the probability of re-entering in poverty was higher than re-entering in non-poverty, being both differences growing with the number of accumulated spells. Past experiences of poverty and non-poverty seem to be essential to predict the future status of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper, motivated by the so-called North–South problem in trade, analyzesex antetrade preferences and the source of potential political conflicts regarding trade liberalization. Developing a dynamic extension of the traditional Heckscher–Ohlin model with imperfect labor mobility and tracking overall dynamic paths from the autarky to free-trade steady states, we demonstrate that in the presence of inter-sectoral migration barrier, bilateral free-trade agreements can be welcomed (opposed) by the majority of workers in a capital-abundant (labor-abundant) country, which is inconsistent with the welfare prediction by Stolper and Samuelson. This paper also proposes a numerical algorithm to solve for the entire transition path of the model under rational expectation. Our simulation experiments further reveal that preannounced and delayed implementation can facilitate a bilateral free-trade agreement by partially neutralizing short-run transitional gains and losses so as to persuade the losers to support the reform without affecting the beneficiaries’ trade preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using data from the Spanish Survey on Equipment and Use of ICTs in Households for 2007–2011, this paper evaluates the effect of employment status on the diffusion of the Internet among the labor force. We use a bivariate probit with sample selection model to account for a potential selection bias that arises because online usage is only observed for Internet users. Our results show that, controlling for income, employment influences online adoption and usage, and we find evidence of a digital divide in adoption and usage by education and age among the labor force. Employed individuals are more likely to have accessed the Internet and used it more frequently than the unemployed and for different activities. However, conditional on adoption, they do not use the Internet for more personal activities. These findings suggest that firms promote and subsidize Internet access, but this sponsored access does not translate into more personal use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to assess how the duration of unemployment spells for Macedonian youth affects their later employment (employment “scarring”) and wage outcomes (wage “scarring”). The discrete-time duration method is used to determine the unemployment spell and the standard employment and Mincer earnings functions. The School-to-Work Transition Survey 2012 is used. The results robustly suggest the presence of employment scarring: youth who remain unemployed over longer time periods have lower chances to find a job afterwards. However, the article provides no evidence for the existence of wage scarring in the Macedonian labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a national survey to estimate individuals’ discount rates for job creation in the community and test whether impatience for jobs is associated county-level unemployment change outcomes in subsequent years. Our results suggest that impatience for jobs is a possible forecast variable for future modelling efforts. To explore whether the impatience effect is general or simply limited to attitudes about local job creation, the same survey asked about discount rates for local amenity development and personal financial windfall. We find that job growth discount rates perform best for forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When does employment growth mirror aggregate growth? Applying a two sector model, where productivity growth differs across sectors of production, this article is concerned with a feature characterising a number of transition economies: a divergence between production and employment growth. In our framework the industrial structure that allows employment growth to mirror output growth is endogenous, and related to a number of industry- and economy-wide characteristics. The article shows how the critical industrial structure necessary for avoiding ‘jobless growth’ is context-specific, questioning a ‘one size fits all’ policy approach when aiming to fulfil the Europe 2020 Strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on labour force survey micro data for 2005–2014 this research evaluates labour market internal mobility in Latvia comparing periods before, during and after the crisis. We also provide the comparison of Latvia’s situation with other euro area countries, which is of particular interest since labour flow statistics for Latvia are not present in major reports on the European labour market. Labour flow estimates and the survival analysis indicate that labour market in Latvia is internally mobile; it accelerated economic recovery after the crisis and is enhancing Latvia’s ability to adjust quickly to internal and external shocks. The flexibility of contract options and working hours, serve as a labour market mobility boosting mechanism. The survival analysis indicates that the flows from/to employment to/from unemployment in Latvia are determined by the characteristics of particular worker groups and the performance of particular sectors of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia plans to emerge as one of the high-income economies by 2020 through the Economic Transformation Programme. A key component of this programme is to adopt more trade liberalisation policies that can generate a variety of economic activities, particularly more jobs. Although the integration with the world market bears the promise of prosperity for the developing and transitional economies, such integration may also adversely affect such economies. Preceding studies regarding labour market and international trade policies are still inconclusive and raise questions that require further examination; particularly in terms of whether exposure to the external sector can create or destroy jobs. The present study evaluates how Malaysia labour market has responded to the economic globalisation of the country. The study focuses on the long-run impact of economic globalisation on unemployment within the period between 1980 and 2014. The study uses autoregressive distributive lags method to examine the pattern of the relationship. The results show that economic globalisation have significant and positive impact on reducing unemployment in Malaysia in the long run. These findings indicate that policy-makers in Malaysia should facilitate the economy globalisation to maintain the current low level of unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the transitions out of unemployment of the recipients of insurance benefits, focusing on whether or not they are recalled to their previous employment. Specifically, a split population duration model (SPDM) for the recall decision by employers is compared with a standard duration model (SDM). We find significant differences between the SPDM and the SDM estimates, both with regard to their magnitude and expected sign. Some of the variables record undervalued estimated hazard rates in the SDM with respect to the SPDM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Self-employment is usually associated with entrepreneurship and it is often promoted as a way of reducing unemployment. Our aim in this article is to analyse the relationship between self-employment and unemployment taking into account its spatial dimension. The entrepreneur activity in each region depends not only on its own endowment but the entrepreneurship environment may be exerted some influence. Regional Spanish data are used to obtain evidence about this relationship using a Spatial Durbin model to embed the spatial dimension. The results reveal that both the direct and indirect effects are relatively small. Further, if unemployment increases in a region, self-employment decreases. However, if unemployment grows in neighbouring regions, incentives for entering self-employment increase, implying that there is a ‘refugee’ effect (self-employment as an answer to the lack of wage employment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unemployment has a heterogeneous effect on well-being. We combine a quantile analysis with matching techniques to analyse the negative impact of unemployment along the well-being distribution of a comprehensive well-being variable. In our analysis of British Household Panel Survey data (1996–2008) we focus on transitions into unemployment and find that average effects of unemployment on a comprehensive well-being variable are less strong than on typical life satisfaction measures. The effect of unemployment on a broad mental well-being variable (GHQ-12) is reversed and mentally less well-off individuals suffer from unemployment more strongly than those scoring high in mental well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of labour supply in Kosovo. Our approach takes into account demand-side restrictions of the labour market, which are typical in such a high unemployment economy, and pays particular attention to gender differences. We find that males’ labour supply is positively affected by their potential wages, especially in urban areas, while females’ labour supply is negatively affected by household labour income. We find significant regional differences in the labour supply of females, but not for males, suggesting that females are less mobile and unable to take advantage of more distant employment opportunities. In addition, we assess the appropriateness of the ILO guidelines in determining an individual’s labour force status in such environments and find that 18% of the inactive individuals are statistically a distinctive group (discouraged workers). We investigated the determinants engaging in job search and found that males and the more educated show a stronger attachment to the labour market. Our advice is for national statistics to report both narrow (ILO definition) and broad (that accounts for the discouraged workers) unemployment rates. This is the first systematic study of these issues in this post-socialist and post-conflict economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the effect of the use of internet job search (IJS) on individual wages. The data utilized in the study are obtained from the Internet and Computer Use Dictionary in the Current Population Survey of September 2001 and October 2003. An Oaxaca Decomposition is used to examine the extent to which wage differences are influenced by IJS. The results show that accessibility to the internet is a crucial factor in the decision of an individual to utilize the internet for job search activities. However, no clear evidence exists that IJS increases individual wages. Additionally, the study also demonstrates that IJS is subject to self-selection bias. Thus, failure to control for self-selection bias results in a very serious bias in estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we implement Bayesian econometric techniques to analyze a theoretical framework built along the lines of Farmer’s micro-foundation of theGeneral Theory. Specifically, we test the ability of a demand-driven search model with self-fulfilling expectations to match the behaviour of the US economy over the last 30 years. The main findings of our empirical investigation are the following. First, all over the period, our model fits data very well. Second, demand shocks are the most relevant in explaining the variability of concerned variables. In addition, our estimates reveal that a large negative demand shock caused the Great Recession via a sudden drop of confidence. Overall, those results are consistent with the main features of the New `Farmerian’ Economics as well as to latest demand-side explanations of the finance-induced recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France has received little attention in the literature of defense economics, despite some outstanding features of the country’s situation. This study attempts to partially fill this gap with new empirical evidence which evaluates the influence of military expenditure on the unemployment rate between 1975 and 2008. Our estimation is based on the ARDL approach to cointegration. The results reveal that both defense and non-defense spending exert a negative influence on unemployment but that defense spending has a higher negative impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Okun’s Law is an empirically observed, negative relationship between changes in an economy’s unemployment rate and its growth rate of output. The baseline search and matching model with stochastic labour productivity fails to match the Okun’s coefficient, because it generates a too low unemployment volatility and a too high correlation between labour productivity and unemployment. The model is capable of matching the coefficient if it is extended with an addition of employment separation shocks plus a high calibrated value of nonmarket activities. This article also shows that changes in the stochastic properties of exogenous shocks could explain changes in the Okun’s coefficient in the Great Moderation (1984–2007). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

By using a competition measure derived from the textual analysis of firms’ 10-K filings, we examine the relationship between product market competition and the county-level unemployment. We find that unemployment is negatively related to product market competition pressure and the result is robust in additional tests. We also find that this relationship is strengthened in a good economy. Our findings are consistent with the previous theoretical prediction that competition can reduce unemployment. This article provides new evidence on the interactions between product markets and the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Generous unemployment benefits are a conventional explanation of the high rates of unemployment in many OECD countries. However, this perception has been challenged on the basis that cross-national evidence comes only from regression analyses of unemployment on the OECD's gross replacement rate but that results are not robust to improved, multidimensional measures of generosity. In this article, I conduct a detailed empirical analysis of how social welfare programs affect unemployment in 17 OECD countries, from 1975 to 2000, using a detailed concept of labor “decommodification” to make cross-national comparisons of generosity. The results show that unemployment benefits remain an important, robust determinant of unemployment even when the new measure is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new estimator for counterfactuals in duration models. The counterfactual in a duration model is the length of the spell in case the regressor would have been different. We introduce the structural duration function, which gives these counterfactuals. The advantage of focusing on counterfactuals is that one does not need to identify the mixed proportional hazard model. In particular, we present examples in which the mixed proportional hazard model is unidentified or has a singular information matrix but our estimator for counterfactuals still converges at rateN1/2, whereNis the number of observations. We apply the structural duration function to simulate important policy effects, including a change in welfare benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our article tests for hysteresis of unemployment rate for 17 Eurozone countries over the period 2000:1 to 2013:1 through the use of new nonlinear panel unit root tests by adopting the sequential panel selection method (SPSM), proposed by Chortareas and Kapetanios (2009) and a nonlinear panel unit root test developed by Ucar and Omay (2009). The results show that the unemployment rates for 17 Eurozone countries are not stationary and conform to the hysteresis hypothesis for both panel unit root tests of Ucar and Omay (2009) and SPSM without Fourier. We reported the results of the Panel Kapetanios, Shin and Snell (KSS) test with a Fourier function and found that the unemployment rates in 11 countries are stationary and this result is in accord with natural rate hypothesis. On the other hand, unemployment rates in six countries, namely Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, Portugal and Cyprus, show hysteresis effect. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We report the results of an experiment that determined the importance of an information disclosure policy in job search behaviour. We controlled the level of employment information disclosed after every experimental round. When we announced the subjects’ wage levels, which at that point they had accepted along with their counterparts in a social network, the subjects’ average reservation wages increased significantly according to their initial preference. However, when this information was not revealed, the reservation wage remained the same despite the availability of the social network. We suggest that the green-eyed monster effect may be significant in explaining these results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article studies the effects of venture capital on the performance of the labour market. Using data from a much larger sample of countries than previous papers, it finds more readily available venture capital to favourably affect both the unemployment and the employment rate. The magnitude of the estimated effects is substantial. We control for both endogeneity of venture capital availability and most major determinants of labour market performance. The results are robust to variations in specification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using the results of surveys of senior company managers to measure the strictness of hiring and firing regulation, this article finds that stricter regulation moderately increased unemployment in developing countries over 1992 to 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article evaluates the effectiveness of subsidized temporary jobs as stepping stones to regular employment. We study a French program that allows job seekers to work part-time while remaining registered with the unemployment agency. In this program, insured individuals concurrently receive part of their unemployment benefits and wage income. Using administrative data, we find that subsidized temporary jobs have both a significant lock-in effect and a significant positive post-treatment impact on the hazard rate to employment. Since individuals facing a high implicit tax rate have incentives to self-select into better part-time jobs, we also find that a higher tax rate leads to a weaker lock-in effect and a stronger post-treatment effect. Simulations suggest that the lock-in effect first dominates, but that the overall effect eventually becomes positive. They also point to ways of improving the effectiveness of the policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using data on 78 countries from 1984 to 2008 and a large number of controls, this article studies the unemployment effect of a major characteristic of the financial system: its level of sophistication, i.e. the variety of financial institutions and instruments available to the economy. It finds that a higher level of sophistication is likely to reduce unemployment. The magnitude of the estimated effect is moderate but noticeable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using administrative data, this article measures the ‘effective’ duration of unemployment benefit recipiency. Our results suggest that this duration varies considerably when we use spells instead of data on individuals. The exit hazard rate from unemployment using spells is overestimated when compared to the one obtained with data on individuals and, therefore, the expected duration of unemployment benefit recipiency is underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]