Unemployment: Questions and Some Answers
Unemployment: Questions and Some Answers
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失业：问题和一些答案
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发表时间：
1998
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
S. Nickell
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Nickell
在经济合作与发展组织中，或多或少每个国家在二战后的几十年里，无论是在战前还是战后，失业率都低于其他任何时期。例如，在英国，自1850年以来，除20世纪50年代和60年代外，在和平时期的每个十年，失业率都超过了5%。或者，正如我们在表1中看到的(第779页)，在所考虑的每个国家中，1980年代和90年代的平均失业率都比1960年代高，通常要高得多。为什么会这样，这是本论文的基础问题之一。第二个问题也在表1(第779页)的失业数字中得到说明，它涉及经合组织国家失业率差异巨大的原因？正如我们将看到的，这些都是棘手的问题。特别是第一个问题，我们没有一个完整的答案。我这样说，并不是说我们没有与这些数字大致相符的理论。事实上，我们的理论或多或少都与任何数字一致。我们缺乏对经合组织失业率时间序列模式的令人满意的实证解释。在接下来的内容中，我们将继续关注这两个问题，首先考虑理论背景，然后寻找一些可能的答案。我们以对第一个问题的一些投机性猜测结束。
In more or less every country in the OECD, unemployment was lower in the decades following the second world war than in any other period of comparable length, either before or since. For example, in Britain unemployment has exceeded 5% in every peacetime decade from 1850 onwards except for the 1950s and 1960s. Alternatively, as we can see in Table 1 (p. 779), average unemployment in the 1980s and 90s is higher, generally much higher, than in the 1960s in every country considered. Why this is so is one of the questions which underlies this paper. A second question, which is also illustrated in the unemployment numbers presented in Table 1 (p. 779), concerns the causes of the enormous variation in unemployment rates across the OECD countries? As we shall see, these are difficult questions. The first, in particular, is one for which we do not have a complete answer. By this, I do not mean that we do not have theories which are broadly consistent with these numbers. In fact, we have theories consistent with more or less any numbers. What we lack is a satisfactory empirical explanation of the time series pattern of OECD unemployment. In what follows, we remain focused on these two questions, first considering the theoretical background and then looking at some possible answers. We finish with some speculative conjectures on the first question.