Regional Unemployment and Industrial Restructuring in Poland

This paper studies regional unemployment inequality in Poland. We find that higher unemployment regions have experienced greater change in industrial structure. We also find high unemployment regions are those with higher inflow rates to unemployment rather than longer spells of unemployment. These findings suggest that unemployment varies importantly with job destruction in Poland. Econometric analysis of the probability of flowing into unemployment from a job reinforces this impression. It also allows estimation of the extent to which regional unemployment variation is due to economic restructuring.