This study examines the labor markets of the United States and Germany, developing a framework for the analysis of labor market dynamics based upon the dynamic flow analysis, instead of the conventional labor stock data. Until recently, labor market analysis was mainly based on stock data, which is a suitable data source for structural and aggregate phenomena but does not allow for the analysis of processes that are behind the net changes identified by stock data. To identify the dynamic elements in the labor market, information on flows is needed. In recent years flow data have become available, indicating that an enormous amount of that labor market mobility is occurring every month. The use of flow data to analyze questions of the mismatch in the labor market and the underlying labor market dynamics has been suggested recently by scholars. The analysis presented in this study of the labor market in the U.S. and Germany uses these data to link dynamic concepts of labor market adjustment to flow data. This study will be of interest to scholars in labor economics and industrial organization.

In writing this book, I increasingly became aware of the extent to which much of the finest social science research has been devoted to the issue of unemployment. Unemployment rightly is a key issue in the social sciences for search of social and political answers to the economic, social and psychological distress caused by un certainty and macroeconomic change. I was glad to find my own worries shared by eminent and respected scholars: George Akerlof once confessed to pursue the study of unemployment ultimately because of his father's distress from fear of un employment, and Wout Ultee started research on unemployment from the consid eration that parents' talk about unemployment risks should not come to dominate marriage parties or other family occasions. The problem of unemployment is thus hardly confmed to actual loss of income, but one where economic insecurity be gins to undermine the very fabric of society. In consequence, to combat unem ployment should indeed be a foremost issue in societies striving for freedom and justice for their citizenry, yet to succeed obviously requires an understanding of the underlying economic realities. If this study could contribute to this endeavor, all the time spent in writing would seem well spent indeed. Against the significant body of existing social science research on unemploy ment, it seems appropriate to be clear about the scope and limitations of the cur rent study, however.

This paper develops a model of the process of reallocation of labor from the state sector to the private sector. When growth is exogenously determined, we show that in the initial stages of transition unemployment will rise over time. After a critical stage in the transition process, restructuring is accompanied by a decline in unemployment. When growth is endogenously determined, and human capital is acquired by learning-by-doing, we show that whether restructuring eventually occurs is determined by the level of human capital in the private sector and the rate of unemployment. The effects of various shocks and government policies in affecting the costs, speed, and eventual outcome of restructuring are analyzed.

This paper examines the role of the labor market in the transmission process of adjustment policies in developing countries. It begins by reviewing the recent evidence regarding the functioning of these markets. It then studies the implications of wage inertia, nominal contracts, labor market segmentation, and impediments to labor mobility for stabilization policies. The effect of labor market reforms on economic flexibility and the channels through which labor market imperfections alter the effects of structural adjustment measures are discussed next. The last part of the paper identifies a variety of issues that may require further investigation, such as the link between changes in relative wages and the distributional effects of adjustment policies.

Conference papers on sociological aspects of changing labour market and employment patterns deriving from social change, esp. Structural change and economic recession, in the UK - investigates occupational structure changes and the impact on social status and social stratification, social implications of unemployment, the effect of changing sexual division of labour on family and social roles, career patterns, work attitudes, etc.; looks at experience of woman workers, minority groups and young workers. Bibliography, statistical tables.

Challenging the prevailing idea that labor markets are governed by universal economic processes, this significant work argues instead that labor markets develop in tandem with social and political institutions, and thus function in locally specific ways. Focusing on the complex social processes that lie at the heart of the labor market, the author offers a provocative new perspective and proposes new ways of conducting research in the area.

This paper proposes a hidden state Markov model (HMM) that incorporates workers’ unobserved labor market attachment into the analysis of labor market dynamics. Unlike previous literature, which typically assumes that a worker’s observed labor force status follows a first-order Markov process, the proposed HMM allows workers with the same labor force status to have different history-dependent transition probabilities. I show that the estimated HMM generates labor market transition probabilities that match those observed in the data, while the first-order Markov model (FOM) and its many-state extensions cannot. Even compared with the extended FOM, the HMM improves the fit of the empirical transition probabilities by a factor of 30. I apply the HMM to (1) calculate the long-run consequences of separation from stable employment, (2) study evolutions of employment stability across different demographic groups over the past several decades, (3) compare the dynamics of labor market flows during the Great Recession to those during the 1981 recession, and (4) highlight the importance of looking beyond distributions of current labor force status.