This paper provides a critical view of the cross country literature on the impact of labour market institutions and … policies on the evolving pattern of unemployment in OECD countries. Such widely used indicators as the generosity of … unemployment insurance or the strength of trade unions are neither strongly correlated individually with unemployment nor …

the employment performances of those countries. Moreoever, these institutions act asymmetrically along the business cycle …

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 … that a shock to the net flow from unemployment to employment drive the unemployment rate and the participation rate in …

We evaluate the effects of international outsourcing and labor taxation on wage formation and equilibrium unemployment … reduce equilibrium unemployment of low-skilled workers both in the presence and absence of labor taxation. In the presence of … outsourcing, wage tax, tax exemption and payroll tax have an ambiguous effect on equilibrium unemployment. Increasing the degree …

minimum wage causes more unemployment, but also leads to more skill formation as unemployment is concentrated on low … gains of more skill formation outweigh the social welfare losses of increased unemployment. Using a highly conservative …