During the Great Recession mass demonstrations indicated weakened political support in Europe. We show that growing dissatisfaction reflects poor economic conditions; unemployment is particularly important. Using individual level data for 16 Western European countries for 1976-2010, we find that...

We examine the optimal labor market-policy mix over the business cycle. In a search and matching model with risk-averse workers, endogenous hiring and separation, and unobservable search effort we first show how to decentralize the constrained-efficient allocation. This can be achieved by a...

The divergence of unemployment rates between the United States and Europe coincided with a substantial acceleration in capital-embodied technical change in the late 1970s. Evidence suggests that European economies have lagged behind the United States in the adoption and usage of new...