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This study attempts to analyze the various factors which may have led an individual living in 1995 and 1996 in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland, from regular employment to reliance on social welfare via a stage where unemployment benefits are received and another one where the individual may have a temporary job financed by local public authorities. The individual characteristics affecting the transition from one status to the other are analyzed using a logit model while the main features of the groups constituting the subpopulations of individuals holding temporary jobs and of those obtaining social assistance are determined on the basis of cluster analysis.

This study provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between job design and the labor-market environment in which firms operate. In particular, I focus on one aspect of job design: the extent to which employees have discretion (autonomy) to organize their work. There has been considerable emphasis in the last 20 years on the importance of “high-involvement” work practices, which seek to give employees more decision rights at work. This literature has been concerned with the introduction of work practices such as team work, job rotation, or quality circles, and with the use of performance pay contracts. Within this literature, there are also some studies that focus more particularly on the extent to which employees have job discretion or autonomy. Discretion is an important characteristic of jobs because much of the redesign effort that has been conducted in the last years has aimed at giving employees more power to make decisions at work, and performance gains are largely attributed to these changes.

Researchers have long been interested in testing the validity of Okun’s law due to its macroeconomic policy implications. However, most of the studies have focused on testing the law using aggregate data on unemployment and output. In recent times, attention has been shifted to testing the law at the sectoral level. In light of this, the purpose of this study is to examine the response of unemployment to sectoral outputs in Nigeria using the data that covers a period from 1981-2020.

To test the validity of Okun’s law at the sectoral level, both difference and gap methods of specifying Okun’s law are used. Furthermore, the author also uses a series of estimation methods, which include ordinary least squares (OLS), dynamic OLS (DOLS), fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and canonical cointegration regression (CCR).

The results, based on the difference model, are mixed irrespective of estimation and data filter methods. For the gap model, Okun’s law holds for all sectors irrespective of estimation techniques (especially DOLS, FMOLS and CCR) when the Hodrick–Prescott filter method is used to filter data. However, the author discovers that the coefficients of Okun’s law vary across the sectors as the response of unemployment to services sector output is greater than the rest of the sectors. When the Hamilton filter method is used to filter data, the results appear to be mixed across the sectors. The results are almost ditto when all the sectoral variables are put in one model.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the validity of sectoral Okun’s law in Nigeria, the leading economy in Africa.

This “Rapport” proposes to examine the function and effect of British social law in the context of the employment/unemployment debate. This debate is a most significant one for it has not only British, but also European and International dimensions.

In this paper, the author aims to investigate the relationship between economic growth and unemployment in six Arab countries from Middle East and North Africa (MENA) zone including Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan and Oman through the implementation of Okun's law using quarterly dataset covering the time period 2000: 1–2014: 4.

In this paper, static and dynamic linear and nonlinear models are used to test the linkage between cyclical unemployment and cyclical growth rate.

The empirical results from considered models confirm an inverse linkage between unemployment rate and economic growth, as the Okun's law suggests (except for Oman). In a nonlinear autoregressive dynamic linear (NARDL) framework and gap specification, statistically significant Okun's coefficients indicate that output growth can be translated into employment gains. Absolute effect of an economic contraction is significantly larger than that of an expansion in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Lebanon. The opposite is true for Jordan and Oman.

Empirical finding provides then an additional proof that Okun's law could exist in a developing countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon and Jordan. Hence, any attempt to increase gross domestic product (GDP) through some economic fiscal and/or monetary policies in these countries would reduce unemployment rate.

Based on asymmetric specification, the author can conclude with precision that an economic upturn of 3.37, 2.98 and 2.5%, respectively, in Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt reduces unemployment by 1%, whilst the downturn of 5.03 and 2.43% (and about 12%), respectively, in Tunisia and Morocco (and Lebanon and Jordan) achieves the opposite.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of unemployment and labour institutions such as employment protection legislation, coverage of unemployment benefits, minimum wages (MW), union power and tax wedge on migration flows. The authors allow for interactions of these institutions with migration entry laws, as both affect equilibrium wages and employment in destination countries, influencing mobility decisions of immigrants.

The authors use data on migration flows for a sample of 15 OECD countries over the period 1980-2006. The relationship between flows and labour institutions is analysed using OLS techniques and including destination and origin-by-year fixed effects. The coefficients of interest are identified through within country variation. The authors test the robustness of the results to different specifications using, among others, dynamic models for panel data.

The authors find strong and negative effects of unemployment, employment protection and migration policy on flows. The negative effect of migration policy on flows is larger in countries with high than in countries with low employment protection. The authors find positive effects for MW, unemployment benefits and union power. The authors show heterogeneous effects depending on the group of countries of origin and destination.

While the identification strategy allows us to estimate the effects of interest, the baseline estimates may suffer from endogeneity problems in terms of omitted variable bias and reverse causality. The sensitivity checks provide mixed results and show that baseline estimates are not always robust to different specifications. Further work is needed to better address the problem of endogeneity.

The paper adds to the previous literature on the determinants of immigration flows by explicitly considering the labour market environment in destination countries. The results provide insights into potential interaction effects and coordination of reforms in labour markets and immigration policies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Okun’s Law in European countries by distinguishing between the transitory and the permanent effects of output changes upon unemployment and by examining the effect of labor market protection policies upon Okun’s coefficients.

Quarterly data for 13 European Union countries, from the second quarter of 1993 until the first quarter of 2014, are used. Panel data techniques and Mundlak decomposition models are estimated.

Okun’s Law is robust to alternative specifications. The effect of output changes to unemployment rates is weaker for countries with increased labor market protection expenditures and it is more persistent for countries with low labor market protection.

The paper provides evidence that the permanent effect of output changes upon unemployment rates is quantitatively larger than the transitory impact. In addition, it provides evidence that increased labor market protection mitigates the adverse effects of a decrease in output growth rate upon unemployment.

We investigate the impact of private credit expansion and contraction on the unemployment rate in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries.

Credit expansion and contraction are measured using a three-level criterion. The fixed effect panel regression model was used to estimate the impact of private credit contraction and expansion on the unemployment rate in ECOWAS countries.

Private credit contraction significantly increases the unemployment rate in ECOWAS countries. Private credit expansion does not have a significant effect on the unemployment rate. Real GDP growth has a significant negative effect on the unemployment rate which supports the prediction of the Okun’s Law while the inflation rate has a positive and insignificant effect on the rate of unemployment in ECOWAS countries which contradicts the prediction of the Phillips curve.

Policymakers in ECOWAS countries need to be cautious when introducing policies that lead to private credit contraction as it could increase unemployment. Policymakers in ECOWAS countries should also find the “threshold” below which private credit contraction will worsen the unemployment rate and introduce policy measures to ensure that private credit contraction does not fall below the threshold.

The literature has not examined the factors leading to tight labor markets or unemployment in West African countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2023-0939.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the minimum wage law is deleterious to the unskilled, to the young and to members of minority groups.

The main method used in this paper is the logical application of basic supply and demand economic analysis.

The authors found that when a minimum wage of any given level is imposed, those with productivities below that level are at great risk of unemployment. For example, with a minimum wage of $10 per hour, those who can only produce at the rate of $1‐$7, $8, or $9 per hour are likely to become unemployed. Similarly, if the level is raised to, say, $100, then even people with productivity levels of $8 or $90 per hour will lose their jobs.

More effort should be made to ascertain who it is that gains from this law, if it is not the poor and unskilled. Attention should be focused on labor unions in this regard.

The practical implication of this research is that the minimum wage should be repealed.

Present public attitudes, however, overwhelmingly support this legislative enactment. But this is based on economic illiteracy. The public needs to be educated in basic economics.

This paper, if its implications are implemented, will have great value for all those who wish the unemployment rate to be radically reduced.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of governance quality on total unemployment in general and female unemployment in particular in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, comparing the post-Arab Spring period to the pre-Arab Spring era.

A fixed-effects model was used to analyze data from 15 MENA countries from 2002 to 2019.

Our results generally indicate that following the Arab Spring, an enhancement in governance quality is linked with a reduction in unemployment in the MENA region, specifically in the Levant and GCC regions, with this reducing effect being stronger for female unemployment compared to total unemployment. Yet, this trend does not hold in North Africa, where government improvements do not result in better employment.

This study uniquely uncovers the different effects of governance quality on unemployment across sub-regions and sheds light on its significant implications on female unemployment. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers interested in the relationship between governance quality and economic outcomes in the region.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0826