IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2562.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evaluating the European View that the US has No Unemployment Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Richard B. Freeman

Abstract

This study contrasts the labor market performance of the U.S. and OECD Europe in the 1980s and critically evaluates the view that the U.S. has generated more jobs because its labor market is more 'flexible'. The study finds that the greater employment expansion in the U.S. was associated with slower growth of real wages and productivity than in most of OECD Europe rather than with relatively costless flexibility. It also finds that while some aspects of relative wage flexibility, for instance in youth versus adult wages, helped limit U.S. unemployment, other aspects, for instance regional wage, show no greater flexibility in the U.S. than in the U.K., where labor markets are allegedly less flexible. Finally, the study argues that the disparate experiences of the U.K., with a relatively decentralized labor market, and Sweden, with a centralized wage-setting system, show that decentralized labor markets are neither necessary nor sufficient for employment-enhancing wage settlements.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard B. Freeman, 1988. "Evaluating the European View that the US has No Unemployment Problem," NBER Working Papers 2562, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2562
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2562.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Soltwedel, RĂ¼diger & Bothe, Adrian & Hoffmeyer, Martin & Laaser, Claus-Friedrich & Lammers, Konrad & Merz, Monika & Reuter, Dieter, 1990. "Regulierungen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt der Bundesrepublik," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 418, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2562. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.