Squandering European Labor: Social Safety Nets in Times of Economic Turbulence

Lars Ljungqvist

No 321, SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract: This paper reviews the argument that high long-term unemployment in Europe is caused by generous social safety nets in times of economic turbulence. We report on the empirical evidence of a more turbulent economic environment and present the theoretical arguments that establish a link between turbulence and high unemployment. We conclude that a cure to the European unemployment problem must entail a reform of the unemployment insurance system so that benefits decline over the unemployment spell. If the social consensus in Europe makes it difficult to implement declining benefits, we suggest that a complementary way of providing incentives for the unemployed would be to reduce their leisure by imposing work requirements.

Keywords: European unemployment; economic turbulence; unemployment insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 1999-05-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-ltv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 1999, pages 367-388.

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Squandering European Labour: Social Safety Nets in Times of Economic Turbulence (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:hastef:0321

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Helena Lundin ().