Regional labor markets

The problem of European unemployment has been traditionally been studied as a national phenomenon. Various national studies have developed a hypothesis – the labor market hypothesis – that prescribes a series of reforms in labor markets as the cure to unemployment. But do these reforms really work? And is there a regional dimension, or a continent-wide dimension to the problem of European unemployment? The book ‘Regional Labor Markets, Unemployment and Inequality in Europe’ departs from the labor market flexibility hypothesis in distinct ways: first, it changes the unit of analysis to the regional level to explore the regional dimension, and, second, it incorporates the relationship between pay-inequality and unemployment. With these changes, forces at the regional, national and continental levels affecting the unemployment rate are included in the analysis. The book is aimed at economists, policymakers, political scientists, and professors and students of economics in general.