Integration and Search Unemployment: An Analysis of Eastern EU Enlargement

The paper develops a unified general equilibrium model including savings with overlapping generations, investment and search unemployment. Long-run analytical results for the small open economy identify capital accumulation as a prime transmission channel. The effects of integration on unemployment, however, depend importantly on the nature of wage taxation and unemployment compensation. As a separate methodological contribution, we extend a dynamic CGE model for Germany to allow for search unemployment of high- and low-skilled labour. Simulating the effects of Eastern EU enlargement, we find quantitatively small effects of integration but more pronounced labour market effects from immigration.