| Unemployment in France rose steadily from the early-seventies to the mid-eighties. Since the mid-eighties it has continued to experience fluctuations around a very high average level. Equilibrium unemployment theories are a useful framework within which to account for these developments. A multivariate estimation of the WS-PS model on macroeconomic quarterly data, which includes a larger number of potential unemployment determinants than earlier work, allows an enriched reading of the rise in French unemployment and of its persistence at a high level. We estimated it using a conditional VAR-ECM model, which is based upon the weak exogeneity properties of variables over the 1970-1/1996-4 period. The rise in equilibrium unemployment by 10 points in 25 years... |
