This ground-breaking book presents incisive studies by sixteen leading academics, labour policymakers, employment services professionals, and employment researchers from Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Belgium, and Poland. The articles provide an excellent overview of employment services experience throughout the EU, and demonstrate that careful application of active labour market measures can produce positive results in combating long-term unemployment. Notable for its emphasis on the proven power of cooperation among various stakeholders in reducing unemployment, New European Approaches to Long-Term Unemployment will be a welcome resource for employment services both public and private, other public labour and employment organisations, and employers, as well as to academics, lawyers, and other interested professionals. -- Provided by publisher.

A number of studies have shown that long-term unemployment is not only personally damaging in loss of immediate earnings, but that it also severely affects future employment prospects. One study showed that a spell of one month, on average, permanently re.

Examines the main factors influencing unemployment at both an aggregate level and at an individual level and assesses the role of policies to bring unemployment down.

First published in 1989, Combating Long-Term Unemployment follows on from, and is a companion to, Local Authorities and New Technologies. The book seeks to inform debate by analysing policy responses to the problem of long-term unemployment and by focusing on the role of local initiatives in a European context. Long-term unemployment in Europe is a complicated and multifaceted problem, the policy responses to which need to be studied against various contexts. It is designed to appeal to all those interested in policies to combat long-term unemployment: local and central government officials, private sector organizations whose work is relevant to locally based initiatives, and interested academics.

Leading international economists examine the different patterns and long-term trends behind persistent unemployment across Western Europe in light of recent developments in labor market theory. Structural unemployment, or persistently high levels of unemployment that do not follow the ups and downs of a typical business cycle, varies significantly across industrialized countries. In this CESifo volume, leading labor economists analyze the widely diverging patterns of long-term unemployment across Western Europe. Drawing on recent developments in labor market theory and macroeconomics to explain the emergence and persistence of unemployment, the studies look for fundamental explanations and common patterns that might lead to policy solutions.The two opening chapters offer overviews of the problem: European labor market expert Stephen Nickell highlights the unemployment situation in the "Big Four" continental European states of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and American economist Edmund S. Phelps focuses on new theoretical approaches that examine institutional factors influencing unemployment in a given country. Following these introductory essays, prominent economists consider the experiences of their home countries, in chapters on Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. By taking advantage of the richness of research conducted at a national level and making the work accessible to an international audience, this volume contributes to a new understanding of structural unemployment and how it can be overcome through labor market reforms and other economic policy measures. Contributors Torben Andersen, Samuel Bentolila, Norbert Berthold, Guiseppe Bertola, Rainer Fehn, Pietro Garibaldi, Bertil Holmlund, Juan F. Jimeno, Erkki Koskela, Stephen J. Nickell, Jan C. van Ours, Edmund S. Phelps, Jean Pisany-Ferry, Christopher Pissarides, Roope Uusitalo, Brendan Walsh, Martin Werding