Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity are more ambiguous in a broader behavioral framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment controlling for income, and know...

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity on work incentives are more ambiguous in a broader behavioural framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment (given...

It is widely accepted that global forces of technology and trade have caused a profound shift in labor demand towards the most highly skilled, generating sharply rising earnings inequality in flexible labor markets (the U.S.) and persistently high unemployment in rigid labor markets (Europe)....

Measured by changes in real wages, earnings inequality and unemployment, the economic position of lower skilled workers has declined sharply over the past two decades across the developed countries of the OECD. In this paper we survey a wide-ranging empirical literature for evidence bearing on...