Structural unemployment, or persistently high levels of unemployment that do not follow
the ups and downs of a typical business cycle, varies significantly across industrialized
countries. In this CESifo volume, leading labor economists analyze the widely diverging
patterns of long-term unemployment across Western Europe. Drawing on recent developments
in labor market theory and macroeconomics to explain the emergence and persistence of
unemployment, the studies look for fundamental explanations and common patterns that might
lead to policy solutions.
The two opening chapters offer overviews of the problem: European labor market expert
Stephen Nickell highlights the unemployment situation in the "Big Four"
continental European states of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and American economist
Edmund S. Phelps focuses on new theoretical approaches that examine institutional factors
influencing unemployment in a given country. Following these introductory essays,
prominent economists consider the experiences of their home countries, in chapters on
Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
Italy, and Spain. By taking advantage of the richness of research conducted at a national
level and making the work accessible to an international audience, this volume contributes
to a new understanding of structural unemployment and how it can be overcome through labor
market reforms and other economic policy measures.
Contributors:
Torben Andersen, Samuel Bentolila, Norbert Berthold, Guiseppe Bertola, Rainer Fehn, Pietro
Garibaldi, Bertil Holmlund, Juan F. Jimeno, Erkki Koskela, Stephen J. Nickell, Jan C. van
Ours, Edmund S. Phelps, Jean Pisany-Ferry, Christopher Pissarides, Roope Uusitalo, Brendan
Walsh, Martin Werding
Martin Werding is Head of the Department of Social Policy and Labor Markets at the Ifo
Institute for Economic Research.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction: Still More Questions Than Answers
Martin Werding
2 A Picture of European Unemployment: Success and Failure
Stephen Nickell 9
3 The Continent's High Unemployment: Possible Institutional Causes and
Some Evidence
Edmund S. Phelps 53
4 From Excess to Shortage--Recent Developments in the Danish Labor
Market
Torben M. Andersen 75
5 The Rise and Fall of Swedish Unemployment
Bertil Holmlund 103
6 Rising Unemployment at the Start of the Twenty-first Century: Has the
Dutch Miracle Come to an End?
Jan C. van Ours 133
7 The Un-intended Convergence: How the Finnish Unemployment Reached the
European Level
Erkki Koskela and Roope Uusitalo 159
8 When Unemployment Disappears: Ireland in the 1990s
Brendan Walsh 187
9 Unemployment in Britain: A European Success Story
Christopher A. Pissarides 209
10 The Surprising French Employment Performance: What Lessons?
Jean Pisani-Ferry 237
11 Unemployment in Germany: Reasons and Remedies
Norbert Berthold and Rainer Fehn 267
12 The Structure and History of Italian Unemployment
Giuseppe Bertola and Pietro Garibaldi 293
13 Spanish Unemployment: The End of the Wild Ride?
Samuel Bentolila and Juan F. Jimeno
6 x 9, 440 pages., 75 illus., Paperback
