IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5917.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employment Policy of the Middle Reagan Years: What Didn't Happen and Why It Didn't Happen

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Feldstein

Abstract

This paper examines the record of employment and unemployment between 1982 and 1986 and discusses a variety of cyclical and structural employment policies that were considered but not implemented during the years 1982-84 when I served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Employment rose by 11 million jobs during the cyclical recovery of those four years, lowering the unemployment rate from 10.8 percent to 6.6 percent. Even before the recovery was visible, the Reagan administration supported the tight Federal Reserve policy to reverse the high inflation at the end of the 1970s. The policies to reduce structural unemployment that were considered but not enacted at the time have become law in later years: a gradual decline in the real minimum wage, the full taxation of unemployment insurance, and a work requirement for those on welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Feldstein, 1997. "Employment Policy of the Middle Reagan Years: What Didn't Happen and Why It Didn't Happen," NBER Working Papers 5917, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5917
    Note: LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5917.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin S. Feldstein, 1975. "The Importance of Temporary Layoffs: An Empirical Analysis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 6(3), pages 725-745.
    2. Feldstein, Martin S, 1978. "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance on Temporary Layoff Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(5), pages 834-846, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liebig, Stefan & Hense, Andrea, 2007. "Bedingungen und Folgen betriebsbedingter Entlassungen mit anschließender Wiederbeschäftigung in Deutschland," Duisburger Beiträge zur soziologischen Forschung 4/2007, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute of Sociology.
    2. Alba-Ramirez, Alfonso & Arranz, Jose M. & Munoz-Bullon, Fernando, 2007. "Exits from unemployment: Recall or new job," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 788-810, October.
    3. Rainer Eppel & Thomas Horvath & Helmut Mahringer & Christine Zulehner, 2015. "Temporäre Layoffs – Das kurzfristige Aussetzen von Arbeitsverhältnissen und seine Bedeutung für die Arbeitslosigkeit," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 88(12), pages 885-897, December.
    4. Nekoei, Arash & Weber, Andrea, 2020. "Seven Facts about Temporary Layoffs," CEPR Discussion Papers 14845, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Patricia M. Anderson & Bruce D. Meyer, 1994. "Unemployment Insurance Benefits and Takeup Rates," NBER Working Papers 4787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Bruce D. Meyer, 1989. "A Quasi-Experimental Approach to the Effects of Unemployment Insurance," NBER Working Papers 3159, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3085-3139 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Phaneuf, Louis, 1979. "Offre globale en économie ouverte, courbe de Phillips et détermination du taux de chômage naturel : une reformulation théorique," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 55(3), pages 375-396, juillet.
    9. Rainer Eppel & Thomas Horvath & Helmut Mahringer, 2017. "Die Auswirkungen temporärer Layoffs auf die weitere Erwerbskarriere der betroffenen Arbeitskräfte," WIFO Working Papers 539, WIFO.
    10. John Haltiwanger & Scott Schuh, 1999. "Gross job flows between plants and industries," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Mar, pages 41-64.
    11. Raj Chetty, 2005. "Why do Unemployment Benefits Raise Unemployment Durations? Moral Hazard vs. Liquidity," NBER Working Papers 11760, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Tan Wang & Tony S. Wirjanto, 2016. "Risk Aversion, Uncertainty, Unemployment Insurance Benefit and Duration of "Wait" Unemployment," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 17(1), pages 1-34, May.
    13. M I Howland, 1984. "Regional Variations in Cyclical Employment," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 16(7), pages 863-877, July.
    14. Hansen, Gary D & Imrohoroglu, Ayse, 1992. "The Role of Unemployment Insurance in an Economy with Liquidity Constraints and Moral Hazard," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 118-142, February.
    15. Albanese, Andrea & Picchio, Matteo & Ghirelli, Corinna, 2020. "Timed to Say Goodbye: Does Unemployment Benefit Eligibility Affect Worker Layoffs?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    16. Costain, James S. & Reiter, Michael, 2008. "Business cycles, unemployment insurance, and the calibration of matching models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1120-1155, April.
    17. Arranz, José M., 2006. "Unemployment duration, unemployment benefits and recalls," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb066218, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    18. Albertini, Julien & Fairise, Xavier & Terriau, Anthony, 2023. "Unemployment insurance, recalls, and experience rating," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    19. Di Tella, Rafael & MacCulloch, Robert, 2006. "Europe vs America: Institutional hysteresis in a simple normative model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(12), pages 2161-2186, December.
    20. Lawrence F. Katz, 1986. "Layoffs, Recall and the Duration of Unemployment," NBER Working Papers 1825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Christian Calmès, 2003. "Poignée de main invisible et persistance des cycles économiques : une revue de la littérature," Staff Working Papers 03-40, Bank of Canada.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers

    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:5917. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.