The peristence of European unemployment stands in striking contrast to the cyclical pattern of unemployment in the US. Many people attribute the rise in European unemployment to increased imbalances between the pattern of labour demand and supply - in other words, to greater mismatch, but existing mismatch indicators do not support this view. However, the obvious inference is not legitimate because the evidence is based on trended data, and thus gives rise to spurious statistical results. To get around the problem, the author uses the dynamic flow approach to structural unemployment and disaggregated data. The reader will find new results on "non-spurious" mismatch tendencies, occupational reallocation, the matching of apprentices, and the importance of matching and mobility for wage differentials.

In this paper, we estimate matching functions using disaggregate data. We find strong support for the matching approach, with most specifications implying slightly increasing returns to scale. This finding does not appear to arise from our inclusion of additional controls or from the level of disaggregation, and so we conclude that earlier findings of constant returns in the US may be due to the various approximations needed to construct an aggregate time series. We also find evidence of endogenous job competition between the employed and nonemployed, so that the estimated parameters from a matching function cannot be interpreted as structural parameters.

This book addresses a number of important topics and issues associated with China's economic transition, growth and global integration. The chapters, by a distinguished group of scholars, provide a timely assessment of recent developments in the Chinese economy. The authors employ contemporary economic theory and the latest statistics to analyze the sources and spillover effects of China's growth, to investigate the relationship between growth and business cycle, and to shed light on China's growth prospects in the coming decade. In the context of growth, transition and globalization, the chapters also cover issues such as labour economics, urban efficiency, banking and macroeconomic management. Economic Growth, Transition and Globalization in China is a highly focused and unique work of direct policy relevance and is aimed at an international audience. It is an invaluable combination of rigorous theoretical work and empirical material. This timely book should be an important reference for researchers and students of Asian studies, and the Chinese economy, in particular. It will also appeal to business analysts.

Contents: Individual Education Decisions - Life Expectancy Decisions - Education and Earnings Inequality - Individual Search Decisions - Disaggregate Matching - Strategic Hiring and Search - Unobserved Bilateral Search - Regional Mobility and Job Competition.

Top scholars synthesize and analyze scholarship on this widely used tool of policy analysis in 27 articles, setting forth its accomplishments, difficulties, and means of implementation. Though CGE modeling does not play a prominent role in top U.S. graduate schools, it is employed universally in the development of economic policy. This collection is particularly important because it presents a history of modeling applications and examines competing points of view. - Presents coherent summaries of CGE theories that inform major model types - Covers the construction of CGE databases, model solving, and computer-assisted interpretation of results - Shows how CGE modeling has made a contribution to economic policy