Why did the average duration of unemployment become so much longer?

Toshihiko Mukoyama () and Aysegul Sahin ()

Journal of Monetary Economics, 2009, vol. 56, issue 2, pages 200-209

Abstract: There has been a substantial increase in the average duration of unemployment relative to the unemployment rate in the U.S. over the last 30 years. We evaluate the performance of a standard job-search model in explaining this phenomenon. In particular, we examine whether the increase in within-group wage inequality and the decline in the incidence of unemployment can account for the increase in unemployment duration. The results indicate that these two changes can explain a significant part of the increase over the last 30 years, although the model fails to match the behavior of unemployment duration during 1980s.

Keywords: Unemployment; duration; Wage; dispersion; Job; search; model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009

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Related works:
Working Paper: Why Did the Average Duration of Unemployment Become So Much Longer? (2004)
Working Paper: Why did the average duration of unemployment become so much longer? (2004)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:moneco:v:56:y:2009:i:2:p:200-209

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