Using data on 53 countries, this paper studies the unemployment effects of the far-reaching banking liberalization that many countries engaged in between the late 1970s and the early 2000s. According to the regression results, this liberalization substantially decreased unemployment,...

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze how financial system turmoil affected unemployment in industrial countries during the period 1982 to 2003. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses annual data on 17 industrial countries. It employs the International Monetary Fund's financial stress...

Using data on 68 developing countries from 1979 to 2008 and controlling for a wide array of factors, this paper finds that a rise in the real interest rate increases the unemployment rate and decreases the employment rate. The magnitude of these effects is small. The results are robust to...

Using data on 74 countries and a large number of controls, this paper finds that a higher degree of ethnic fractionalization is correlated with a higher unemployment rate. This is probably mainly because fractionalization reduces labor market efficiency.

This paper studies the effect of banking system concentration on unemployment in developing countries. Using data on 42 developing countries, it finds that more concentration increased unemployment over the period 1987–2007. The magnitude of the effect is substantial. The result is robust to...