Multiple Causation and the Measurement of Unemployment

2002

The establishment of appropriate policy measures for fighting unemployment has always been difficult since causes of unemployment are hard to identify. This paper analyses an approach used mainly in the 1960s and 1970s in economics, in which classification is used as a way to deal with such a complex, multiple causal phenomenon like unemployment. The method is based on decomposing unemployment into classes of unemployment and the measurement of each of these classes by reference to stable, measurable macroeconomic relationships like the Phillips curve and the Beveridge curve. In this way economists were able to ‘diagnose’ unemployment and make policy recommendations for fighting unemployment without making explicit reference to the underlying singular causes of unemployment.

isu.edu

Abstract: This note articulates that the commonly-used term “structural unemployment” due to a decrease in labor demand in an industry or region essentially means “sectoral shift”–an extreme case of frictional unemployment, by definition. It suggests that structural ...

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1983

2006

This dissertation contains an analysis of how economists and statisticians built instruments for measuring various concepts of unemployment, and how that process deviated from the normative, dominant theory of measurement in the philosophy of science, the Representational Theory of Measurement. For that purpose, a number of case studies have been conducted where social scientists have tried to build instruments for the measurement of particular concepts of unemployment. These cases show that the Representational Theory of Measurement’s requirement of a strict isomorphism (one-to-one mapping) between phenomenon and data is an idealization. This thesis shows how social scientists gain trust in their numbers through the use of a variety of principles of reliability and additional resources, such as causal relations, regression, correlation, representations of stable mechanisms, diagrams and models, and standardized quantitative rules.

Indian Journal of Economics and Development, 2015

The relationship between labour unemployment in developing economy, Keynesian unemployment and Phillips curve is yet to be completely understood the traditional view completely separates labour unemployment in developing economy from Keynesian unemployment, this paper parts away from this view and seeks to establish a relation between them.The presence of a trade off between inflation and unemployment in both developed and developing economy is also inquired into in this paper. Most of the economists believe that labour intensive industry is a characteristic of a developing country while capital intensive of a developed, we also inquire into this view.

The Indian Economic Journal

The objective of the paper is to evaluate the explanatory power of three competing core interpretations and economic strategy approaches to unemployment. The first is the neo-classical hypothesis according to which the rigidities in the labour market are responsible for the presence of unemployment. The second is the Keynesian hypothesis according to which the market system fails to create adequate effective demand for the full employment of labour. Finally, the third is the classical/Marxian model according to which employment or unemployment are depended on the dynamics of capital accumulation. The econometric analysis uses data from the US, German and Swedish economies which are characterised by quite diverse labour market structures. The results of empirical analysis reveals that the explanatory content of both the Keynesian and the dassical/Marxian core models fared better than the mainstream approach.

Problems of defining and measuring unemployemnt in the contemporary American economy are examined here using data from the official employment survey. The paper finds that only a minority of the unemployed conform to the conventional picture of a worker who has lost one job and is looking f or another job. Other important categories are those who have jobs but are not at work because the jobs have not yet started or because of layoff, workers who are in normal spells between temporary jobs, people who are looking into the possibility of work as an alternative to household duties, school, or retirement, and people who have come back into the labor force. None of these categories is dominant.

1989

Oxford Economic Papers, 1981

International Journal of Social Welfare, 1995

This article introduces the special issue. Unemployment in Argentina, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain is placed in the context of global economics. The end of full employment in Sweden was part of an international deinstitutionalization that connected employment closely to economic growth. The immediate causes of the economic decline and mass unemployment in Sweden were a financial crash and neoliberal government policies. The ambiguity of unemployment in the criteria for evaluating the performance of policy-makers and three different cultures among unemployed people are outlined. An overview of what is known about the consequences of unemployment in terms of excess illness and mortality is given.