The aim of this study is twofold. First, the study aims to investigate how employment agency officers, in both public and private agencies, perceive how they help young people with immigrant background to access the labour market. Secondly, the study aims to investigate these professionals’ perspectives on the possibilities and barriers faced by young people with immigrant background in their process of labour integration. A qualitative study, with face to face semi - structured interviews was conducted with five professionals from both the public and private sector of the Swedish work agency in one municipality in mid Sweden. A social constructivist perspective and empowerment and advocacy theory were used. The results show the importance of the Swedish language and its importance to establish social contacts in the process of finding jobs and integrate. The results also show other difficulties immigrants may face in the labor market such as regulations laid by employers or recruiters as requirements such as being fluent in Swedish language. According to the professionals, the youth immigrants with educational background have an easier access to integration. With "Nystartsjobb" (new start job) the youth immigrants can build networks, increase their language knowledge, get references and experience and job benefits in case of job loss.

M.A. (Economics) / Unemployment is a familiar affliction of our age, but its nature, causes and cures remain matters of dispute. As with many familiar things, closer examination leads to deepening mystery. Its pathology is complex, with social as well as economic ramifications" (Routh, 1986: 1). In the world of today which is characterised by globalization, the unemployment problem has become a worldwide problem. It is endemic in both developed and developing countries. But for developing countries, this problem brings more challenges(like increased poverty) and complications (like political and social instability). South Africa is certainly no exception. In South Africa, this problem is succinctly expressed by Barker (1992: 71): "Unemployment is probably the most severe problem South African society is experiencing and it is conceivably the root cause of many other problems, such as high crime rates, violence, abject poverty.... Prominent leaders in and outside government have also stated that no government will be able to govern South Africa ...if this problem is not addressed effectively". According to Hall (1997: 396), one of the overlooked aspects of the unemployment crisis in South Africa is the spatial distribution of unemployment within cities. Apartheid urban planning concentrated the black population in peripheral residential areas, where the majority of the unemployed population is found. In Gauteng, for example, unemployment rates (using the 1991 census) vary between zero percent in former white suburbs and above thirty percent mainly in the former black townships. In addition to the apartheid urban landscape the recent trend of suburbanisation of economic activity, the decline in central business districts and the continued lack of development in former black residential areas may intensify the problem of unemployment. The long-term effects of these processes are far reaching, that is, they may result in profound labour market segmentation which may, in turn, negatively impact on urban development strategies aimed at reintegrating South Africa's cities and addressing the problems of poverty, unemployment, urbanisation and housing. With the establishment of democracy in 1994, many South African unemployed people became hopeful that there was going to be employment for everyone. This was further reinforced by the adoption of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), and the promises made by the developed Western countries to assist South Africa in its development endeavours. In 1996, South Africa opted for a neo-liberal approach (which advocates for less government involvement in the economic activity) to economic development by adopting the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy - which is a supply-side policy. The GEAR strategy calls for a minimalist state, restructuring of the economy like the elimination of export subsidies and the reduction of import tariffs to improve the competitiveness of South African industries in the global arena. In fact, to the contrary, at this stage, GEAR has not helped to stop the increasing tide of unemployment and retrenchments as industries are concerned with cutting costs(of which, labour costs are often the highest) to meet global competition. The cliche "lean is mean" has become crucial in business decisions. The implication of this is that more people have been put out of work. The unemployment level in South Africa has reached endemic proportions. The problem is getting more complicated by the prospects of the closure of marginal gold mines due to the possibility of a weaker gold price and increasing costs.

The importance of a well-functioning housing market has been proposed for long within economics, economic geography and urban planning.  A high mobility on the housing market most likely positively affects the dynamics of the labor market, a dynamic important for economic growth. Mobility defined as the link between the worker and the workplace in terms of transportation and housing are most likely essential components of a dynamic and well-functioning labor market. The Oswald hypothesis states that positive relationship between homeownership and unemployment exists, the lower mobility in the homeownership housing stock compared to the rental housing stock affects labor market mobility in a negative way which can be noted if European countries are compared. My thesis explores this relationship in a Swedish context by mobilizing a quantitative approach with aggregate data on municipal level ranging from 1998 to 2013. The Swedish housing market is in a deregulation process since 1992, a conversion process from public rental housing to homeownership co-op apartments has taken place and public policies now favor homeownership over renting. Municipal data on unemployment, homeownership of apartment, rental tenant and control variables for economy and personal characteristics are applied in Pooled OLS, random effects and fixed effects regression models. The results from the Pooled OLS and the Random effects model confirms the positive relationship proposed by Oswald for homeownership of apartment but not for homeownership of detached housing. Also rental tenant show a positive relationship. The results from the fixed effect estimation rejects the hypothesis altogether and show a negative relationship.

Cette thèse vise à vérifier, à partir de données françaises, l’hypothèse d’Oswald selon laquelle la propriété immobilité serait un frein à la flexibilité du marché du travail et entraînerait donc un taux de chômage plus élevé. Le premier chapitre présente une synthèse de la littérature récente s’intéressant à la vérification de cette hypothèse. Le deuxième chapitre analyse l’effet du statut résidentiel sur les taux de retour à l’emploi. Les résultats empiriques montrent que les propriétaires ont plus de chance d’accéder à des emplois locaux, mais plus faible chance d’accéder à des emplois impliquant une mobilité résidentielle. Le troisième chapitre cherche à apporter un éclairage supplémentaire sur le comportement de recherche d’emploi des propriétaires selon qu'ils sont accédants ou non. Les résultats empiriques indiquent que les accédants à la propriété sortent plus vite du chômage tandis que les propriétaires détenant un stock d'actifs financiers élevé restent plus longtemps au chômage. Enfin, le quatrième chapitre propose un modèle théorique à agents hétérogènes afin d'analyser les effets du statut résidentiel et des politiques publiques sur les taux de retour à l'emploi. Nos résultats révèlent que la mobilité des propriétaires et des locataires est affectée par les coûts de mobilité et que le plus faible taux de sortie du chômage des propriétaires s’explique essentiellement par la stratégie d’accession à la propriété et par un effet de richesse. / This thesis seeks to verify, from French data, the Oswald hypothesis, according to which homeownership would be a hindrance to labor market’s flexibility and thus result in a higher unemployment rate. The first chapter presents a synthesis of recent literature seeking to verify this hypothesis. The second chapter analyzes the effect of residential status on rates return-to-employment. Empirical findings show that owners have more likely to access local jobs, but less likely to access jobs involving residential mobility. The second chapter investigates the effect of housing tenure status on unemployment duration. Empirical findings indicate that constrained owners leave faster unemployment, while owners holding a large stock of financial assets remain longer unemployed. Finally, the fourth chapter proposes a model with heterogeneous agents to analyze the effects of residential status and public policies on rates return-to-employment. Our results show that the cost of mobility affects the geographical mobility and the lowest exit rate of unemployment to owners is mainly due to the strategy of homeownership and a wealth effect.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the direct effects of labour market institu- tions on unemployment rates in the selected EU Members. For this purpose, we use macroeconomic cross-country, time series analysis for 21 OECD European members over the 2001-2011 period. The results gained from our empirical ana- lysis are rather inconclusive over the possibility to explain the development of European unemployment solely by analysing the effects of labour market insti- tutions. This finding might as well be caused by the volatile evolution of both output and unemployment over the observed period. The importance of busi- ness cycle is confirmed by our results as the measure for the output gap appears highly significant in every model specification. Unlike the majority of previous literature, in our estimates the proxies for macroeconomic shocks do not turn out to be significant. Hence, we decided not to examine mutual interactions between macroeconomic shocks and institutions. JEL Classifications: J08, J30, J51, J64 Keywords: unemployment, labour market institutions, EU, active labour mar- ket policies Author s e-mail: janhnevkovsky@gmail.com Supervisor s e-mail: strielkowski@fsv.cuni.cz 1

In this thesis I have examined Anti-Natalism, specifically arguments by David Benatar, which conclude that human procreation is under all circumstances wrong, and Seana Shiffrin, which concludes that procreation is a “moral hard case.” I provide objections and responses to each argument of my own, as well as those from Saul Smilansky, Rivka Weinberg, and David Wasserman. I also examine the manner in which female unemployment rates (as well as aggregate female and male) unemployment rates in a year between 2005 and 2014 impact fertility rates in the following year (from 2006-2015).

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dong Li / The first essay tests whether the returns to education are different between entrepreneurs and regular employees. If the signaling model of education is correct, entrepreneurs should receive lower returns from education (relative to employees) because they have no need to signal their productivity to an employer. However, this result should only hold if the researcher is able to control for selection into self-employment and the endogeneity of ed- ucation. This is illustrated using a stylized model of signaling. The relationship between self-employment and the returns to education is tested using data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation. This rich panel dataset makes it possible to control for many business-specific characteristics, like business equity, that have been previously unaccounted for in the literature. Ordinary least squares regressions find the correlation between education and earnings to be weaker for entrepreneurs. To control for selection, I utilize a Heckman selection model using spousal health insurance and housing equity as instruments. It shows that selection biases downward the correlation between education and income for entrepreneurs. Finally, a fixed effects model is employed to control for any time invariant unobserved heterogeneity. This approach indicates that education is as valu- able, if not more valuable, to entrepreneurs as it is to employees. This does not support the signaling hypothesis. The finding is robust to different measures of entrepreneurial earnings. The second essay explores whether unemployed workers make successful transitions into self-employment. It is well established that unemployed workers are more likely to transition into self-employment than individuals coming from paid employment. A growing body of literature suggests that these formerly unemployed entrants tend to exit self-employment earlier than typical entrants. It is tempting to attribute this result to differences in ability between the two groups. However, using an adapted version of Frank (1988)’s Intertemporal Model of Industrial Exit, I show that this is not the case. In this model, entrants to self- employment receive noisy information about their true entrepreneurial ability from their earnings in the market. I show that low ability entrants to entrepreneurship should be no more likely to exit self-employment than high ability entrants to self-employment. This is because although low ability entrants will earn less as entrepreneurs, their outside wage in paid employment will also be proportionately lower. Survival in self-employment, therefore, is a function of how initial expectations match reality. This leads me to suggest that the high exit rates out of self-employment for the formerly unemployed may be because this group systematically overestimates their entrepreneurial ability at entry. This hypothesis is justified by evidence from the psychology literature that low ability individuals tend to overestimate their performance. Duration analysis on data from the 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation confirms that the formerly unemployed are more likely to exit self-employment. I also find preliminary evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the unemployed overestimate their likelihood of success in self-employment. These findings should give policymakers pause before incentivicing the unemployed to enter self-employment.

M.Comm. / South Africa has experienced a long period of high unemployment. While the economy has achieved relatively higher GDP growth rates in the recent past, unfortunately not as many jobs have been created. This is because of, amongst other constraints, the skills shortage experienced. This shortage of skills is not solely the result of the emigration of professionals since the inception of the new political dispensation in 1994. This paper investigated the economic sectors showing high growth, with a view of identifying the sectors that can be promoted for high investment and hence the creation of employment for the country’s labour force. The secondary and the tertiary sectors have been found to contributing more to the country’s GDP growth and could create more employment opportunities if promoted by more investment. However, the unemployment experienced is mainly structural in nature and the country should concentrate on human capital development and skills development to reduce it. The education of the labour force in South Africa has been found to be concentrated in the secondary level. This has raised questions as to the ability of the country’s education system to fulfil its role of empowering the labour force. More than ten years into democracy, blacks are the most disadvantaged population group regarding the levels of appropriate educational qualifications making them contribute the most to the unemployed labour force.

The main topic of this diploma thesis is Unemployment in the region Most and the ways how to solve this problem. The theoretical part of the diploma thesis explains, what is the unemployment, what are its causes and shows the real numbers of the unemployment in our country and in the World. The second portion assesses the theory of active policy of employment in the Czech republic in its form of investment incentives. The practical portion assesses the region Most, that suffers from long term the highest rate of unemployment and explains the historical and present causes of this situation. Next there is a detailed analysis of the companies in the region Most, which got the investment incentives, and assesses their gain for the reduction of unemployment. The central part of this thesis is about a company EUROPAHAUS GROUP, Ltd. and a description of the procedure of getting its investment incentives.