This thesis presents three essays, each seeking to deepen our understanding of labour markets. The first essay studies the response of real wages and hours of new hires to the business cycle during the UK’s Great Recession. The second essay analysis in how far the assumption of rational expectations in the Mortensen-Pissarides model is required for the economy to converge to an equilibrium. In particular, it asks if it is possible for economic agents to use simple linear forecast rules and still ensure convergence to the rational expectations equilibrium. The final essay seeks to determine whether labour income shares at the sectoral level are constant across countries, as is usually assumed in the literature, and whether this assumption quantitatively matters. Therefore, it takes the input-output structures across countries into account, and conducts a development accounting exercise. Real wages and hours in the Great Recession: Evidence from firms and their entry-level jobs Using employer-employee panel data, I provide novel facts on how real wages and working hours within jobs responded to the UK’s Great Recession. In contrast to previous studies, my data enables me to address the cyclical composition of jobs. I show that firms were able to respond to the Great Recession with substantial real wage cuts and by recruiting more part-time workers. A one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate led to an average decline in real hourly wages of 2.8 per cent for new hires and 2.6 per cent for job stayers. Hours of new hires in entry-level jobs were also substantially procyclical, while job-stayer hours were nearly constant. My findings suggest that models assuming rigid labour costs of new hires are not helpful for understanding the behaviour of unemployment over the business cycle. Unemployment and econometric learning I apply well-known results of the econometric learning literature to the Mortensen-Pissarides real business cycle model. Agents can always learn the unique rational expectations equilibrium (REE), for all possible well-defined sets of parameter values, by using the minimum-state-variable solution to the model and decreasing gain learning. From this perspective, the assumption of rational expectations in the model could be seen as reasonable. But using a parametrisation with UK data, simulations show that the speed of convergence to the REE is slow. This type of learning dampens the cyclical response of unemployment to small structural shocks. Measuring sectoral income shares: Accounting for input-output structures across countries I use input-output tables to measure the labour income shares of the goods and the services sector for a large cross-section of mostly developed countries. I present two novel findings: sectoral labour income shares significantly increase with the level of development, and within-country differences between these income shares are uncorrelated with the level of development. These cross-country differences are not caused by variation in the input-output structure or final demand, but originate at the production-side of the economy. I measure sectoral total factor productivity using a development accounting framework to assess the quantitative importance of my findings. The goods sector of less developed countries is relatively less productive than the services sector; assuming that the values of the sectoral labour income shares across countries are identical to their corresponding U.S. values leads to an underestimation of productivity differences across countries. All findings are robust to different adjustments for the labour income of the self-employed.

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The thesis consists of three empirical essays on the topics of self-employment, happiness and international trade. Essay 1 studies how immigrant self-employment entry is affected by the local business cycle in Sweden. Using the unemployment rate at the local labour market level as a proxy for the local business cycle, our study shows that the self-employment entry behaviour for native men and immigrant men is negatively affected by the unemployment rate, except for immigrants from Middle East. However, such a negative effect is quantitatively weaker among the non-European immigrants. Further, the result shows that immigrants from the Middle East are positively affected by the unemployment rate, meaning they are more likely to be pushed into self-employment in recessions. For women, we also find the unemployment rate has a negative impact on the self-employment decision of native women and immigrant women, except for the Middle East group. However, compared with men, the quantitative size of the unemployment rate effect on self-employment is smaller among women, implying the less important role of business cycle in determining females’ entry into self-employment. Essay 2 investigates the non-pecuniary return of self-employment in China. The results show that the life satisfaction of self-employed men is significantly higher than that of wage-employed men; the life satisfaction of self-employed women is not statistically significant different from that of wage-employed women. Moreover, we show that the life satisfaction of self-employed men in the informal sector is significantly higher than that of wage-employed men in the formal sector. The life satisfaction of wage-employed men in the informal sector is not significantly different from that of wage-employed men in the formal sector. For women, we find that there is no significant life satisfaction disparity between workers in the formal and informal sector. Finally, our job satisfaction data also concludes that self-employment in China is not inferior to wage employment. Essay 3 evaluates how Swedish manufacturing employment is affected by the increasing import competition from China. The results show that the growth of manufacturing employment is not statistically significant affected by the increasing import competition from China. Moreover, in general, the increasing import exposure from China does not significantly affect the employment growth of non-manufacturing sector either. Regarding the earnings, the analysis shows that the low wage earners in the manufacturing sector is not significantly affected by the increasing import penetration from China while median and high wage earners are positively affected.

The aim of the thesis is to identify the specific impacts of the global financial and economic crisis on the labour market of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The theoretical part deals with the problems of unemployment and presents the basic theoretical approaches to the functioning of the labour market. The paper then presents the underlying causes, development and spread of the economic crisis and its impact on economic performance and labour markets with an emphasis on the development of the unemployment rate in the European Union and Central European countries. The output is the analysis of effects on the labour market of the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the crisis, their evaluation and comparison.

The diploma thesis is focused on problematic of unemployment in the district of Kromeriz between 2005 and 2009. I have analysed unemployment per categories, for example age, sex, education etc. The goal of this thesis is to briefly review current situation and suggest improvements which could lead to reduction of unemployment rate in district of Kromeriz in 2010.

In the presented master's thesis, I analyse termination of employment. There are analysed factors affecting unemployment structure of expectanes from various categories aspects. The thesis includes also suggestions of solutions and precautions which should lead to reduction of unemployment rate in the district.

In this thesis, I deal with the issue of unemployment in the district of Beroun. The thesis is an analysis of the current and past status in the period 2007 - 2011. The aim is to identify possible options for reducing unemployment in that district.

For the past years, there has been an absence of economic crisis on a global level. The unexpected COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus led to a significant disruption in economies across the globe, followed by a decrease in economic activity. The decline in economic activity caused market shocks which eventually increased unemployment. This paper aims to analyse unemployment between the years 2018 to 2021 to measure pre- and post-pandemic unemployment rate among Swedish municipalities. The research question is, was the COVID-19 affected significantly related to an increase in unemployment rates across the 290 municipalities in Sweden? Data collection is from several agencies, including the Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen), The Public Health Agency of Sweden (Folkhälsomyndigheten), and Statistic Sweden (SCB). The regression model used to analyse the variables are series of fixed effects regression. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the pandemic and economic downturn. By examining variables such as COVID-19 affected, immigrants, education, and disposable income in municipalities, this paper was able to conclude that COVID-19 affected are significantly related to unemployment increase in all 290 municipalities.

Denna uppsats har undersökt kommunal arbetslöshet i 22 kommuner, vilka är geografiskt anslutande till Sveriges tre storstadsområden – Stockholm, Göteborg och Malmö. Uppsatsen har ämnat undersöka huruvida det föreligger signifikanta orsakssamband som påverkar kommunal arbetslöshet. Uppsatsen har även avsett undersöka om det finns tydliga skillnader i faktorer som påverkar arbetslöshetsnivån i de undersökta regionerna, samt förorts- och storstadskommuner emellan. För att besvara syftet har det i studien genomförts en regressionsanalys med paneldata för de undersökta kommunerna mellan åren 1996-2014. Förklaringsvariablerna, vilka ämnar förklara kommunal arbetslöshetsnivå, har varit kommunal inkomstskattenivå, medelårsinkomst, andel med minst tre års eftergymnasial utbildning, befolkningstäthet och andel utrikesfödda. Resultaten påvisar positiva samband för variablerna kommunal inkomstskattenivå, medelårsinkomst, befolkningstäthet och utrikesfödda, vilket innebär att när dessa faktorer förändras påverkas även kommunal arbetslöshetsnivå i motsvarande riktning. Den enskilda förklaringsvariabel som har ett negativt samband med arbetslöshet är andel med eftergymnasial utbildning, vilket innebär att när denna faktor förändras påverkas kommunal arbetslöshet i motsatt riktning. Resultaten visar skillnader i kommunal inkomstskattenivås påverkan på arbetslöshet storstads- och förortskommuner emellan, då storstadskommuner visar ett starkare sådant samband. Inga övriga skillnader i variablernas påverkan på arbetslöshet kan tydligt urskiljas ur resultaten. Den tydligaste skillnaden regionerna emellan är sambandet mellan utrikesfödda och arbetslöshet, vilket är positivt för Stockholmsregionen, men negativt för Malmö- och Göteborgsregionerna. Resultaten påvisar också skillnader i hur starkt variablerna kommunal inkomstskattenivå och andel med eftergymnasial utbildning påverkar arbetslösheten. Sambandet mellan kommunal inkomstskattenivå och arbetslöshet är starkast i Göteborgsområdet, i förhållande till övriga undersökta områden, och variabeln eftergymnasial utbildning har starkast påverkan på arbetslöshetsnivån i Malmöområdet, i relation till övriga två områden. / This thesis has examined the unemployment rate in 22 municipalities that are geographically connected to the metropolitan areas of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The aim has been to examine whether there are distinct differences in factors that effect the municipal unemployment rate. The thesis has also aimed to investigate distinct differences in municipal unemployment rate in suburban and metropolitan municipalities. A regression analysis of panel data between the years 1996-2014 has been estimated and the explanatory variables are level of municipal income tax, average annual income, proportion of individuals with a higher educational level of three years or more, population density and proportion of foreign born.   The results indicate positive relationships between the variables municipal income tax, average annual income, population density and foreign born, which means that whenever these factors alter – the municipal unemployment rate does so as well. The sole explanatory variable with a negative relationship to municipal unemployment rate is education, which means that if the level of education changes, the unemployment rate alters in the opposit direction. The results also indicate differences in how strongly the municipal income tax effect the unemployment rate in suburban and metropolitan municipalities, since metropolitan municipalities indicate a stronger relationship between this variable and the unemployment rate. Moreover, there are no clear differences in the variables’ effect on the municipal unemployment rate. The most distinct disparity between the three regions is the relationship between the proportion of foreign born and municipal unemployment rate, which solely is positive for the region of Stockholm and negative for the regions of Malmö and Gothenburg. The results also indicate differences in how strongly the variables of municipal income tax and level of education affect the unemployment rate. The relationship between municipal income tax and unemployment rate is most powerful in the region of Gothenburg, in comparison to the other two regions, and the variable of level of education effect the region of Malmö the most.

本論文採用了由Box and Jenkins(1976)所提出的ARIMA模型，以及由BOX and Tiao(1975)所提出的Intervention Model，去配適台灣的失業率型態，以及比較其預測的結果。 結果顯示出台灣的失業率具有季節性的型態，亦即台灣的失業率並非僅僅受到月分之間的相關，年分之間也有所關連。是故，當本論文在預測失業率的水準時，也考慮到此一因素，加入季節性的ARIMA模型對台灣的失業率加以預測。另外，時間序列的資料常常受到外生因素的干擾。對於失業率來說，政策上的改變將會影響失業率本身的結構，因此利用介入模式預測失業率，可以得到一組較精確的預測值。介入模式的事件有以下五個，分別是解嚴、六年國建、台灣引進外勞、中共飛彈試射、新十大建設。前四個事件的確影響了失業率的結構，不過第五項，也就是新十大建設並沒有顯著影響失業率的結構。理由可能是新十大建設的內容並不能合宜的解決經濟上與社會上的問題，以及這些建設尚未完工，以致無法達到期預期的效果。 比較兩模型的預測結果時，採用了MPE、MSE、MAE、MAPE作為模型評估的準則，結果指出介入模式的預測結果比起季節性ARIMA的預測結果來的有效率。 / This article adopts the ARIMA model, which was first introduced by Box and Jenkins (1976), and the intervention model, which was developed by Box and Tiao (1975), to fit the time series data for the unemployment rate in Taiwan, and thus to compare the results of the forecasts. The results reveal that there is a seasonal effect in the data on the unemployment rate. This indicates that the unemployment rate figures are not only related from month to month but are also related from year to year. When forecasting the level of unemployment, we should examine not only the neighboring months but also the corresponding months in the previous year. Time series are frequently affected by certain external events. In the discussion on the unemployment rate, the policies implemented by the government as well as military threats indeed influence the structure of the series. By making a forecast using the intervention model, we can evaluate the effect of the external events which would give rise to more accurate forecasts. In this study, there were five interventions included in relation to the unemployment rate series, which were as follows. First, the lifting of Martial Law in February 1987. Second, the Six-year National Development Plan launched in June 1991. Third, the hiring of foreign labor in Taiwan, which took effect in October 1991. Fourth, the threats of missile tests from the PRC in Feb 1996. Fifth, the ten new construction programs launched in November 2003. The first four events were indeed found to give rise to a structural change in the unemployment rate series at the moment when they occurred. This result might also have implied that not all of the actual effect of expansionary policies could have exactly decreased the unemployment rate, and therefore have solved the economic and social problems simultaneously. When we refer to the comparison of the above two models, the ultimate choice of a model may depend on its goodness of fit, such as the residual mean square, AIC, or BIC. As the main purpose of this study is to forecast future values, the alternative criteria for model selection can be based on forecast errors. The comparison is based on statistics such as MPE, MSE, MAE and MAPE. The results indicate that the intervention model outperforms the seasonal ARIMA model.