Journal issue

Unemployment Persistence and the Long Run: Re-evaluating the Natural Rate' Oxford Economic Papers, Special Issue.

This special issue will contain the papers presented at the CEPR conference in Vigo on 30/11/97-1/12/97. The conference will examine whether unemployment in major OECD countries can be explained satisfactorily through the natural rate theory. The aim, furthermore, is to study a family of alternative approaches, viewing movements in unemployment as the outcome of the interplay between labour market shocks and the network of lagged adjustment processes. The papers will focus on why unemployment may be away from its long-run level for substantial periods of time and how the long-run level may itself depend on lagged adjustments.