Since the mid-1970s Spain has suffered from persistently high unemployment, as it has occurred in other parts of Europe. Although during the last few years the unemployment level has declined, there are still enormous disparities in the unemployment rate across groups, skills and regions. This thesis attempts to shed some light on the mechanisms of unemployment persistence and skill and regional mismatch in Spain. Chapter 1 provides a first introductory analysis of Spanish data. The chapter emphasises the importance of skill and regional mismatch, which may have contributed about fifty percent to the observed increase in total unemployment over the last twenty years. The chapter also studies the cyclical pattern in the Spanish unemployment, which is a very important aspect in view of its magnitude. The following three chapters are devoted to the evaluation of different mechanisms that may have been at work. In all three chapters, the analysis relies on the specification, calibration and simulation of dynamic general equilibrium models with matching on the labour market. Chapter 2 focuses on cyclical fluctuations, with particular emphasis on the role of reallocation shocks. Chapter 3 focuses on « skill mismatch »; more precisely the chapter investigates to what extent unemployment rate disparities across skill groups can be explained in terms of a « ladder effect ». Chapter 4 focuses on regional disparities. A model is built to investigate the possible determinants of regional disparities and the role of labour mobility.

We develop a framework where mismatch between vacancies and job seekers across sectors translates into higher unemployment by lowering the aggregate job-finding rate. We use this framework to measure the contribution of mismatch to the recent rise in U.S. unemployment by exploiting two sources of cross-sectional data on vacancies, JOLTS and HWOL, a new database covering the universe of online U.S. job advertisements. Mismatch across industries and occupations explains at most 1/3 of the total observed increase in the unemployment rate, whereas geographical mismatch plays no apparent role. The share of the rise in unemployment explained by occupational mismatch is increasing in the education level.

High and persistent unemployment has been experienced by most developed countries during the 1980s. Many researchers have sought to explain this development in terms of "mismatch," arguing that the economies that have suffered most from persistently high unemployment are those that have been least flexible in matching their unemployed with the available employment opportunities. This conference proceedings volume examines the evidence on sectoral wage differentials, labor mobility and the ratio of unemployment to job vacancies in detailed studies of seven countries with a wide variety of labor market and macroeconomic structures: the United States, Japan, West Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain.

High and persistent unemployment rates in Europe during the eighties gave rise to a lively discussion about the nature and causes of joblessness. Among other sources structural unemployment was blamed for the lack of response of unemployment to increasing aggregate demand. Renewed attention was thus devoted to an analysis of the magnitude and the development of structural unemployment as well to its possi ble determinants. In this literature, the Beveridge curve experienced a resurrection and, at first glance, it seemed to be an appropriate tool to analyse the aforementioned issues. However, it was soon recognized that the Beveridge curve, i. e. the relation between unemployment and vacancies, was anything but stable, thus requiring a care ful distinction between dynamic loops around a (stable?) long-run Beveridge curve and possible shifts due to, say, an increasing mismatch between labor supplied and demanded. The controversy is far from being settled at the time of this writing. This book contains a collection of hitherto unpublished papers which are devoted to a theoretical and econometric analysis of structural unemployment. The papers put considerable emphasis on the question to what extent the Beveridge curve can serve as an adequate tool for such studies. The countries under consideration are Germany and Austria. In what follows a very brief summary of each paper will be outlined. Franz and Siebeck present, at some length, a theoretical and econometric analysis of the Beveridge curve in Germany.