El desempleo espanol: factores estructurales

Unemployment is one of the most important problems of the Spanish and European economies. A possible analysis, vastly extended in recent literature, focuses on mismatch problems between labour demand and supply. In this sense, the empirical relationship between the vacancy rate and the unemployment rate, the so-called Beveridge curve or UV curve, offers an instrument to characterise the unemployment of the considered economy. Different studies, such as Jackman et al. (1983) and Pissarides (1985) among others, point out that outward shifts of the Beveridge curve can be interpreted as increases in structural unemployment. The identification of these shifts provide some useful information that can be used for policy-making. The main objective of this paper is to identify the outward shifts of the Beveridge curve for the Spanish economy in the period 1978-96 using annual data from the Encuesta de Poblacion Activa (INE) and the Estadistica de Empleo, INEM. As both sources provide regional disaggregated data, it is possible to use a regional panel data to analyse a wide pool of factors that can explain the outward shift of the UV curve, a possible change in the elasticity of the unemployment rate with respect to the vacancy rate and the existence of different regional behaviours in the process of job-matching.