IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbrobs/v13y1998i1p59-77.html

How Bad Is Unemployment in Tunisia? Assessing Labor Market Efficiency in a Developing Country

Author

Listed:
  • Rama, Martin

Abstract

Tunisia's unemployment rate has been among the highest in the world for almost two decades. This article claims that such a high rate reflects measurement problems rather than labor market inefficiency. After discussing the reasons why unemployment rates may not be comparable across countries and reviewing the tools that are available to analyze unemployment in a specific country, the article provides four pieces of evidence to substantiate its claim. Two of them relate to the criteria used in Tunisia to measure unemployment and the way these criteria have changed over time. Two use records on the number of active job seekers and vacancies as reported to the official employment agency. Together, this body of evidence suggests that unemployment has declined steadily over time and remains an issue for first-time job seekers only. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Rama, Martin, 1998. "How Bad Is Unemployment in Tunisia? Assessing Labor Market Efficiency in a Developing Country," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 13(1), pages 59-77, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbrobs:v:13:y:1998:i:1:p:59-77
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldbank.org/research/journals/wbro/obsfeb98/pdf/article4.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchard, Olivier & Jimeno, Juan F, 1995. "Structural Unemployment: Spain versus Portugal," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 212-218, May.
    2. Edin, P-A. & Holmlund, B., 1990. "Unemployment, Vacancies And Labour Market Programmes: Swedish Evidence," Papers 1990j, Uppsala - Working Paper Series.
    3. Burda, Michael C, 1993. "Modelling Exits from Unemployment in Eastern Germany: A Matching Function Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 800, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Berman, Eli, 1997. "Help Wanted, Job Needed: Estimates of a Matching Function from Employment Service Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 251-292, January.
    5. repec:bla:econom:v:63:y:1996:i:252:p:589-97 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Mr. Jeffrey R. Franks, 1994. "Explaining Unemployment in Spain: Structural Change, Cyclical Fluctuations, and Labor Market Rigidities," IMF Working Papers 1994/102, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Pissarides, Christopher A, 1985. "Short-run Equilibrium Dynamics of Unemployment Vacancies, and Real Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 676-690, September.
    8. Oliver Jean Blanchard & Peter Diamond, 1989. "The Beveridge Curve," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 20(1), pages 1-76.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stops Michael & Mazzoni Thomas, 2010. "Matchingprozesse auf beruflichen Teilarbeitsmärkten / Job Matching on Occupational Labour Markets," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 230(3), pages 287-312, June.
    2. Eran Yashiv, 2000. "The Determinants of Equilibrium Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1297-1322, December.
    3. Jolivet, Grégory, 2009. "A longitudinal analysis of search frictions and matching in the U.S. labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 121-134, April.
    4. Yashiv, Eran, 2007. "Labor search and matching in macroeconomics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 1859-1895, November.
    5. Yossi Yakhin & Natalya Presman, 2013. "A Flow-Accounting Model of the Labor Market: An Application to Israel," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2013.05, Bank of Israel.
    6. Lottmann, Franziska, 2012. "Spatial dependencies in German matching functions," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 27-41.
    7. Steven J. Davis & R. Jason Faberman & John C. Haltiwanger, 2013. "The Establishment-Level Behavior of Vacancies and Hiring," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(2), pages 581-622.
    8. Christopher A. Pissarides & Barbara Petrongolo, 2001. "Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 390-431, June.
    9. Sniekers, F.J.T., 2013. "Endogenous Beveridge cycles and the volatility of unemployment," CeNDEF Working Papers 13-12, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    10. Postel-Vinay, Fabien & Jolivet, Grégory & Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel, 2011. "Accounting For Endogenous Search Behavior in Matching Function Estimation," CEPR Discussion Papers 8471, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Reinhold Kosfeld & Christian Dreger & Hans-Friedrich Eckey, 2008. "On the stability of the German Beveridge curve: a spatial econometric perspective," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 42(4), pages 967-986, December.
    12. Giovanni Gallipoli & Gianluigi Pelloni, 2013. "Macroeconomic Effects of Job Reallocations: A Survey," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 5(2), pages 127-176, December.
    13. Sheng, Yu & Xu, Xinpeng, 2011. "Real exchange rate, productivity and labor market frictions," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 587-603, April.
    14. James M. Malcomson & Sophocles Mavroeidis, 2007. "Matching Frictions, Efficiency Wages, and Unemployment in the USA and the UK," Working Papers 2007-02, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    15. Kamil Galuscak & Daniel Munich, 2005. "Structural and Cyclical Unemployment: What Can We Derive from the Matching Function?," Working Papers 2005/02, Czech National Bank, Research and Statistics Department.
    16. Dinopoulos, Elias & Grieben, Wolf-Heimo & Şener, Fuat, 2023. "A Policy Conundrum: Schumpeterian Growth or Job Creation?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    17. Ravi Balakrishnan, 2001. "The interaction of firing costs and on-the-job search: an application of a search theoretic model to the Spanish labour market," Working Papers 0102, Banco de España.
    18. Andreas I Mueller & Damian Osterwalder & Josef Zweimüller & Andreas Kettemann, 2024. "Vacancy Durations and Entry Wages: Evidence from Linked Vacancy–Employer–Employee Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(3), pages 1807-1841.
    19. Benedikt Herz & Thijs van Rens, 2020. "Accounting for Mismatch Unemployment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 1619-1654.
    20. Coles, Melvyn G & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2002. "A Test Between Unemployment Theories Using Matching Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 3241, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbrobs:v:13:y:1998:i:1:p:59-77. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.