Germany, as most other European countries, has been plagued by a persistently high level of long-term unemployment … since the early 1980's. In contrast, long-term unemployment is much less of a problem in the United States. One potential … reason for the different structure of unemployment relates to institutional differences in unemployment compensation systems …

between employment, unemployment and non-participation in the labour force at the individual level are derived from panel data …-state or 'equilibrium' unemployment rates for various groups of the labour force. It is shown that these differ greatly between …