Demographic and Education Effects on Unemployment in Europe: Economic Factors and Labour Market Institutions

By Federico Biagi, C. Lucifora. Social Science Research Network, 2005

117 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyse the effects of demographic and education changes on unemployment rates in Europe. Using a panel of European countries for the 1980-2000 period - disaggregated by cohort, gender and education -, we empirically test the economic effects of two stylised facts that have occurred in recent decades: the "baby bust" and the "education boom". We find that structural shifts in the population age structure play an important role and that a lot of variation is also attributable to educational changes, the latter usually neglected in aggregate studies. Results show that demographic and education shocks are qualitatively different for young (adult) workers as well as for more (less) educated people. While adult workers and more educated individuals, in general, experience lower unemployment rates, changes in the population age structure appear to be positively related to young workers' unemployment rates while they have no effect on adults. Conversely changes in the skill structure ("education boom"), even when controlling for skill-biased technological change, reduce the unemployment of the more educated. Labour market institutions also influence unemployment rates in different ways. Unemployment benefits are found to have a positive impact on unemployment, while bargaining coordination and employment protection reduce it.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cb971427ccbc16a6e6aa78b8dc4c3c483c708ecf

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. R. Duval
2. Andrea Bassanini
3. S. Scarpetta
4. R. Bouis
5. Davide Furceri
6. Jonathan R.W. Temple

In General Health Professions

1. R. Duval
2. Andrea Bassanini

Citations in the corpus

• Unemployment, institutions, and reform complementarities: re-assessing the aggregate evidence for OECD countries (2009, methodology): “Following a recent trend in this literature (see Biagi and Lucifora, 2008, and references cited therein), in order to capture large idiosyncratic shocks such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the German reunification and the Swedish banking and real estate crises, in most specifications…”