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Classification of unemployment: Analytical and policy relevance

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Summary

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the way unemployment can be decomposed in several components, and to discuss the analytical and political relevance of such a decomposition. The paper deals systematically with the classifications of unemployment that can be found in the current international literature and fits them into a coherent framework. Finally, the relevance for economic policy of decomposing unemployment into components is discussed.

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This paper is based on Muysken (1988), which was written with the help of a grant from the Organization of Strategic Labour Market Research (OSA). I would like to thank the Department of Economics of the University Catholique de Louvain for their hospitality during two visits, which enabled me to write this paper and the above-mentioned report. I would like to thank S.K. Kuipers for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Muysken, J. Classification of unemployment: Analytical and policy relevance. De Economist 137, 397–424 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01705973

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