Tackling unemployment / Richard Layard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Layard, Richard, 1934-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Unemployment--Great Britain.

Unemployment.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xii, 543 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Macmillan Press ; New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Summary:

Richard Layard is one of Britain's foremost applied economists whose work has had a profound impact on the policy debate in Britain and abroad. This book contains his most influential article on unemployment. It is published along with a companion volume, Tackling Inequality, which also includes his work on economic transition.

Tackling Unemployment explains what causes unemployment, and proposes what can be done to reduce it. It shows that the two most important ways to reduce unemployment are through welfare reform and improve wage flexibility.

If unemployed people are sustained with cash handouts for an indefinite period, as they are in much of Europe, this increases long-term unemployment. The answer, as Layard has argued since the early 1980s, is welfare-to-work': the money wasted on unemployment benefit should be used instead to guarantee work. Wage flexibility is another key to full employment. At the aggregate level, this can be secured more easily by coordinated wage-setting than by a purely free market. However, it is also crucial that relative wages can adjust across regions and skill groups in order to reduce imbalances between labour demand and labour supply. To prevent devastating increases in wage inequality, the skill levels in the workforce must rise fast enough to keep pace with employers' increasing demands for skill.

Careful empirical research and analysis leads to the rejection of many other supposed remedies for unemployment. False solutions include shorter working hours, early retirement, less employment protection and lower employment taxes. But, as Layard explains, there is a strong case for lower taxation of low-wage workes

The book insists that all solutions be analysed within a single coherent framework that actually explains why unemployment is as it is. This framework, the so-called Layard-Nickell model, is the core of the book.

Contents:

1 Why I am an economist 1

Part I Explaining Unemployment

3 Wage rigidity and unemployment in OECD countries 22

4 The labour market 52

5 On vacancies 105

6 Does long-term unemployment reduce a person's chance of a job? 124

7 Mismatch: a framework for thought 141

8 European versus US unemployment: different responses to increases demand for skill? 201

9 Why does unemployment persist? 231

10 Combating unemployment: is flexibility enough? 257

11 The causes of graduate unemployment in India 289

12 Unemployment in Britain: causes and cures 293

Part II Remember for Unemployment

14 Preventing long-term unemployment: an economic analysis 321

15 Preventing long-term unemployment: strategy and costings 338

16 The efficiency case for long-run labour market policies 354

17 The case for subsiding extra jobs 377

18 Is incomes policy the answer to unemployment? 404

19 The real effects of tax-based incomes policies 424

20 How to end pay leapfrogging 440

21 Is unemployment lower if unions bargain over employment? 451

22 Europe in 1984: the case for unsustainable growth 465

Appendix: Richard Layard's Publications 515.

Notes:

"Richard Layard's publications": pages 515-523.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0333722329

0312215770

OCLC:

38833151