The European Employment Problem

Assar Lindbeck

No 616, Seminar Papers from Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies

Abstract: How do we explain the poor employment performance in Western Europe since about the mid-1970s? This question is in fact twofold: what initiated the dramatic rise in unemployment, and what mechanisms have made it continue for so long? My attempts to answer these questions form the basis for a discussion of various policy options. A main point of the paper is the complex interaction, often in the form of complementarities, between different explanatory factors behind the West European employment problem.

Unfortunately, this complexity makes it difficult to test and estimate attempted explanations. Moreover, the complementarities between different factors often preclude any positive effects of isolated policy actions on the employment situation; a battery of policy actions seems necessary.

Keywords: unemployment; policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 1997-10-29
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:343142/FULLTEXT01 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0616

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Seminar Papers from Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hanna Christiansson ().