Thesis advisor: Robert Murphy / Hysteresis, in an economic context, is the idea that periods when the unemployment rate is greater than the natural rate have the effect of raising the underlying natural rate of unemployment (or, non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, NAIRU) and moving it to a new higher equilibrium state. The existence of hysteresis is still a matter of dispute in modern economics.This study examines the economic and employment situation from 1980 to the present and in particular since the beginning of the most recent recession in December 2007 and demonstrates that there exists evidence of hysteresis. It then aims to predict the economic consequences for the future and offers possible solutions to the problem.Given the scale of unemployment in the present economy and the importance of crafting an appropriate policy response, an examination of unemployment through the perspective of the hysteresis theory is a valuable approach that deserves further exploration. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Carroll School of Management Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1980. / Vita. / Bibliography : leaves 265-269. / by Julianne Marie Malveaux. / Ph.D.

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study issues related to unemployment and retirement decisions of workers.The first chapter examines the impact of additional pension benefits on the retirement timing of low-income female workers in Germany. Using administrative pension insurance records from Germany, it studies the impact of a pension subsidy program on retirement decisions of recipients. The kinked schedule of the policy allows me to identify the causal effect using a regression kink design. The estimation suggests that 100 euros in additional monthly pension benefits induce female recipients to claim pensions earlier by about 10 months. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the ratio of the behavioral cost to the mechanical cost of this subsidy program is 0.3, which is smaller than that of other anti-poverty programs. The second chapter studies the total labor supply effects of Unemployment Insurance (UI) for older workers --- both at the extensive and the intensive margin. It documents sharp bunchings in UI inflows at age discontinuities created by UI eligibility for workers in their 50s. Using a combination of regression discontinuity designs and bunching techniques, we quantify the magnitude of these responses exploiting a variety of thresholds, kinks, and notches induced by the UI and retirement institutions. We estimate the total effect using a dynamic life-cycle structural model. Results suggest that the impact of UI extension on non-employment durations for older workers is almost twice as large as the impact for younger workers. The third chapter examines the impact of receiving written advance notification of layoff on the labor supply of displaced workers by exploring the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. The California WARN Act, implemented in 2003, expands the requirements of the federal WARN Act. It provides protection to workers in smaller firms and at smaller layoff events. Using the Displaced Worker Supplement to the Current Population Surveys from 1996 to 2018 and a differences-in-difference method, I find that the displaced workers affected by the mini WARN Acts are 3\% more likely to claim unemployment insurance. Conditional on claiming UI, they are less likely to exhaust UI.

Thesis (M. Dev.) -- University of Limpopo, 2001 / Refer to document

In this dissertation, I investigate how government policies influence an individual's decision to search for and accept a job and/or crime opportunity. Chapter 1 looks at how long it takes for released inmates to find a job, and when they find a job, how their incarceration rate changes. The purpose is to predict the effects of a successful job placement program. An on-the-job search model with crime is used to model criminal behavior, derive the estimation method and analyze different types of policies. The results show the unemployed are incarcerated twice as fast as the employed and take on average four and a half months to find a job. Combining these results, it is demonstrated that reducing the average unemployment spell of criminals by two months reduces crime and recidivism by more than five percent. Chapter 2 incorporates crime into a search and matching model of the labor market. All workers, irrespective of their labor force status can commit crimes and the employment contract is determined optimally. The model is used to study, analytically and quantitatively, the effects of various labor market and crime policies such as unemployment insurance, hiring subsidies and the duration of jail sentences. For example, wage subsidies reduce unemployment, the crime rates of employed and unemployed workers, and improve society's welfare. Chapter 3 investigates a market where wholesalers search for retailers and retailers search for consumers. I show how the timing, targets and types of anti-drug policies matter. For instance, supply falls if the likelihood of apprehension rises when a network is established. Alternatively, if the cost of apprehension rises for wholesale dealers when a network is searching for consumers, then revenue sharing is distorted. Such a distortion will increase retail profits and aggregate supply. As an application, the model provides an alternative explanation for why the United States cocaine market saw rising consumption and falling prices during the 1980's. Specifically, the ``War on Drugs" distorted the cocaine market and increased supply.

<p>Sweden is today, one of the most industrialised nations of the world, and as such, one of the most ethnically diverse countries in terms of immigrants. Of a total population of just over 9 million people, 12% of the population was born in another country other than Sweden. At the turn of the previous century, a national census in 1900 showed the population of Sweden was 5, 1 million, of which 36 000 were foreign-born. It was a mere 100 years later, in the year</p><p>2004 where the population of Sweden had passed the 9 million mark and the number of foreign-born people in the population had increased dramatically from 1 percent in 1900 to 12</p><p>percent in 2004. In the Skellefteå Municipality, the unemployment situation among immigrants also does not looking promising. The unemployment figures that were released by the Swedish Job Centre</p><p>and published in the local newspaper dated 7th April stated that of the total registered unemployment figure in Skellefteå is 5670 of which 1500 are regarded as “öppet arbetslösa”,624 people are foreign-born, which is totally disproportionate when considering the total</p><p>number of Swedish inhabitants to the immigrant population. Figures show that it is nearly half of this group of 1500 that are immigrants.Due to the high percentage of unemployment among immigrants in Skellefteå Municipality,this leads to the research question:</p><p>“Factors that can prevent the diversifying process for immigrants entering the labour market in Skellefteå Municipality!”</p><p>The results show that the organisation will look at the benefits of having immigrants as employees in terms of immigrants’ ability to speak a language that the organisation considers useful for its customers. It is also looking to benefit from the knowledge that immigrants may have on knowledge from other cultures that he or she came from. If, however, the organisations deems it to be unnecessary to have immigrants for a job that requires his or her a certain special skill, an immigrant job application will have to go through</p><p>the normal recruitment process and measure up to the organisation’s concept of “The Best person for the job”.</p><p>In addition to going through a normal process of “The Best Person for The Job” concept in the recruitment stage, immigrants will have to overcome three common factors that can prevent them from finding a job. These have become evident during this study:</p><p>1) The Swedish language: All organisations in this study require immigrants to have a certain proficiency in the Swedish language. Organisations that are customerorientated require high proficiency levels in the Swedish language.</p><p>2) Education: Very few organisations received job applications from immigrants, but those who have, stress a concern they have, about the qualification criteria of an immigrant’s application.</p><p>3) Unknown factor: uncertainty of how to handle people from another culture.</p>

<p>Sverige avsätter idag över en miljard kronor på att hjälpa arbetslösa att starta eget och därmed bli entreprenörer. Hög self-efficacy är en grundförutsättning för att lyckas som entreprenör och våra erfarenheter av att lyckas är den enskilt största källan till self-efficacy. Miljön som arbetslös är både fysiskt och psykiskt påfrestande och ofta kantad av motgångar, något som i teorin skulle kunna leda till sänkt self-efficacy. Studiens syfte var att undersöka om arbetslösas self-efficacy förändras med tiden de förblir arbetslösa. En enkätundersökning med 107 arbetslösa från en arbetsförmedling i Mellansverige genomfördes. Resultatet visade inte på något samband mellan långtidsarbetslöshet och sänkt self-efficacy. Studien visade däremot på flera intressanta skillnader i hur starkt de olika informationskällorna bidrog till self-efficacy.</p>

<p>Arbetslöshet innefattar fler faktorer än brist på arbete och ekonomiska begränsningar. Tidigare studier uppvisar samband mellan arbetslöshet och stressrelaterade sjukdomar och som arbetslös kan upplevelse av kategorisering medverka till känsla av att förlora sin identitet. I denna kvalitativa intervjustudie bestående av sex stycken arbetslösa, kvinnliga deltagare diskuteras olika coping strategiers betydelse för hur situationen som arbetslös hanteras. Datamaterialet har bearbetats induktivt genom meningskoncentrering. Studien visar att stöd från omgivningen samt självförtroende är avgörande faktorer som medverkar till adaptiv, problemfokuserad coping. Det sociala stödet anses betydelsefullt även vid känslomässigt fokuserad coping samt reducerar oro och depressivitet. Studien bidrar till förståelse för hur viktig yttre coping upplevs av individen, samt självförtroendets betydelse.</p>

Since the end of World War Two, the US unemployment rate has remained constant while the EU unemployment rate started to increase at the beginning of the 1970s. This increase in aggregate unemployment hides dramatic differences across skill groups: the increase has remained fairly small for high-skilled workers, while it is usually considerable for the least skilled workers. What caused these developments still remains a debated issue. A possible explanation is the size of the labor market institutions, much more developed on this side of the Atlantic. To study this question, we construct an intertemporal general equilibrium model. We start from the standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) model and we extend it by adding labor market frictions and institutions (minimum wage, employment protection and unemployment benefits). We also further develop the model along the skill dimension, by assuming that the population is composed of low- and high-skilled workers. The main conclusion is that rigid institutions, and especially rigid wages, may well play an important role, direct or indirect through the interactions with exogenous shocks, to explain the relative rise in the European unemployment rate, and especially the low-skilled unemployment rate. We also show that reductions in employer's contributions, targeted at the minimum wage, lead to a fall in the destruction of the less productive jobs and therefore strongly stimulate low-skilled employment, while increasing the welfare of all individuals.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.