The Unemployment Crisis

Layard, Nickell and Jackman have fully revised and updated part of their well-established 1991 book - Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market - to create a shorter and entirely accessible undergraduate textbook on unemployment. The authors question the inevitability of present levels of unemployment in the Western world, and the view that there exists a trade-off between price stability and unemployment levels.
Students are presented with a lucid and comprehensive explanation of the reasons for unemployment, the existence of an average level, and the reasons why unemployment levels often fluctuate. The authors have created a general framework of analysis which fully integrates macroeconomic theory with a detailed look at the microeconomic workings of the labour market. This is illuminated by up-to-the-minute empirical evidence relating to all OECD countries. This book also incorporates the latest theoretical thinking on topics such as 'insider-outsider' theories, and hysteresis in labour markets, as well as revealing the role of factors such as union bargaining, efficiency wages, benefits, and mismatch. The final part authoritatively weighs up various governmental practices to combat unemployment, and reveals the different institutions and recent experiences of OECD countries.
Students will find this book essential partly because it is very clearly written. The authors have used algebra in parts, but the exposition can be followed without equations, and they also present key findings geometrically. Students and tutors will find a list of discussion questions at the end useful, and a bibliography provides further reading for advanced students.