Explaining Employment and Unemployment

This book is concerned with one of the most important questions in the macroeconomics of labor markets: How are movements in employment and unemployment to be interpreted? Over the past forty years, different areas of the OECD have experienced strikingly different changes in employment and unemployment. How can we account for these differing experiences? A lot hinges on our interpretation of the events - not only our conceptual understanding, but also our predictions of labor and macroeconomic activity and policy advice.