Unemployment

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad. This book contains his most influential articles on unemployment. It is published along with a companion volume, Tackling Inequality, which also includes his work on economic transition. Tackling Unemployment explains what causes unemployment, and proposes what can be done to reduce it. It shows that the two most important ways to reduce unemployment are through welfare reform and improved wage flexibility. If unemployed people are sustained with cash handouts for an indefinite period, as they are in much of Europe, this increases long-term unemployment. The answer, as Layard has argued since the early 1980s, is 'welfare-to-work': the money wasted on unemployment benefit should be used instead to guarantee work. Wage flexibility is another key to full employment. At the aggregate level, this can be secured more easily by coordinated wage-setting than by a purely free market. However, it is also crucial that relative wages can adjust across regions and skill groups in order to reduce imbalances between labour demand and labour supply. To prevent devastating increases in wage inequality, the skill levels in the workforce must rise fast enough to keep pace with employers' increasing demands for skill. Careful empirical research and analysis leads to the rejection of many other supposed remedies for unemployment. False solutions include shorter working hours, early retirement, less employment protection and lower employment taxes. But, as Layard explains, there is a strong case for lower taxation of low-wage workes The book insists that all solutions be analysed within a single coherent framework that actually explains why unemployment is as it is. This framework, the so-called Layard-Nickell model, is the core of the book.

ISBN 0333722329   DEWEY edition DC21 ISBN13 9780333722329 (What's this?)   Pages 560 Publisher Palgrave Macmillan   Weight (grammes) 980 Imprint Palgrave Macmillan   Published in Basingstoke Format Hardback   Height (mm) 222 Publication date 12 Apr 1999   Width (mm) 141 Non-book description 488   Spine width (mm) 40 Library of Congress HD5765.A6   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY 331.137

		Preface
		Acknowledgements
1		Why I am an economist		1
Pt. I		Explaining Unemployment
2		Introduction to Part I		13
3		Wage rigidity and unemployment in OECD countries		22
4		The labour market		52
5		On vacancies		105
6		Does long-term unemployment reduce a person's chance of a job?		124
7		Mismatch: a framework for thought		141
8		European versus US unemployment: different responses to increased demand for skill?		201
9		Why does unemployment persist?		231
10		Combating unemployment: is flexibility enough?		257
11		The causes of graduate unemployment in India		289
12		Unemployment in Britain: causes and cures		293
Pt. II		Remedies for Unemployment
13		Introduction to Part II		313
14		Preventing long-term unemployment: an economic analysis		321
15		Preventing long-term unemployment: strategy and costings		338
16		The efficiency case for long-run labour market policies		354
17		The case for subsidising extra jobs		377
18		Is incomes policy the answer to unemployment?		404
19		The real effects of tax-based incomes policies		424
20		How to end pay leapfrogging		440
21		Is unemployment lower if unions bargain over employment?		451
		More...

'An account of the contribution of one of Britain's leading labour-market economists to one of the key economic policy debates of the 1980s and 1990s. Few people have made such a consistent and influential contribution over the years as Layard. He helped found the respected Employment Policy Institute and has ensured the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics remains a major source of innovative academic work on the economy and the labour market. He can claim to be one of the intellectual godfathers of the welfare to work strategy that the government is now putting into practice.' - John Monks, Times Higher Education Supplement

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