Weder empirische Daten noch die ökonomische Theorie geben klare Anhaltspunkte, wie sich regionale Disparitäten entwickeln und welche politischen Maßnahmen angebracht sind, um diese zu reduzieren. Dies gilt insbesondere für Deutschland, wo die Wiedervereinigung zwischen West- und Ostdeutschland im Jahr 1990 die regionalen Arbeitslosigkeitsunterschiede deutlich verstärkt hat. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt Marcus Kunz drei zentrale Fragen: 1. Zeigen Arbeitslosenquoten in den Kreisen und Regionen Deutschlands regionale Konvergenz oder Divergenz? 2. Wie erfolgt die Anpassung von Kreisen und Regionen nach einem regionalen Arbeitsmarktschock? 3. Welche Faktoren sind für die regionalen Arbeitslosigkeitsunterschiede in Westdeutschland verantwortlich? Im Gegensatz zu anderen Studien über regionale Arbeitslosenquoten in Deutschland, die sich ausschließlich auf größere Regionen konzentrieren, zeichnet die Studie von Kunz ein detaillierteres empirisches Bild, da der Fokus auf der Entwicklung der Kreisebene liegt, wo die Unterschiede besonders ausgeprägt sind. Publikationssprache: Englisch

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between labor market flexibility and unemployment outcomes. Using a panel of 97 countries from 1985 to 2008, the results of the paper suggest that improvements in labor market flexibility have a statistically and significant negative impact on unemployment outcomes (over unemployment, youth unemployment and long-term unemployment). Among the different labor market flexibility indicators analyzed, hiring and firing regulations and hiring costs are found to have the strongest effect.

Italy's traditionally high unemployment has often been linked to the supposed rigidity of the labour market. In fact, the situation resembles a leopard skin, where competitive, dynamic activities coexist with protected, inefficient sectors.

This work investigates the time series properties of the unemployment rate of the Spanish regions over the period 1976-2011. For that purpose, the authors employ the PANIC procedures of Bai and Ng (2004), which allows to decompose the observed unemployment rate series into common factor and idiosyncratic components. This enables the authors to identify the exact source behind the hysteretic behaviour found in Spanish regional unemployment. Overall, the analysis with three different proxies for the excess of labour supply renders strong support for the hysteresis hypothesis, which appears to be caused by a common stochastic trend driving all the regional unemployment series. In the second part of the analysis the authors try to determine the macroeconomic and institutional factors that are able to explain the time series evolution of the common factor, and in turn help us shed light on the ultimate sources of hysteresis. The reader shall see how the variables that the empirical analysis emphasises as relevant closely fit into the main causes of the Spanish unemployment behaviour. Finally, some policy considerations drawn from the results are presented.

This fifth volume in the International Papers in Political Economy (IPPE) series focuses on the theme of path dependency and macroeconomics in terms of both theory and applications. The volume examines how path dependency is linked with notions of fundamental uncertainty, non-ergodicity and hysteresis.

This book brings together up-to-date findings on the regional dimensions of European labour markets. It provides a conceptual and empirical study of the interactions between the European economy and its regions, paying particular attention to the issue of the transition of Central and Eastern European countries to a market economy. The topics analysed include: the structure of the shocks affecting employment (regional, industrial, national), the relationships between labour market efficiency and the regional distribution of unemployment, wage flexibility in EU member countries or in their regions and the role of active labour market policies in affecting the regional distribution of employment and unemployment.