Staff Studies

This paper reviews recent analytical and empirical research on the determination of employment, to provide a framework for evaluating the merits of alternative policies to cope with unemployment. Particular emphasis is placed on the mechanisms of employment and wage determination described in recent studies. The lack of any systematic relationship between countries' long-run growth and employment performances reflects the fact that output per person employed (labor productivity) or, conversely, the labor intensity of production, has developed quite differently across countries. The main mechanism through which the rise in real wages has prevented greater employment gains in Europe over the past ten to fifteen years seems to have been a substitution of capital for labor which has lowered the labor intensity of production significantly more than in the United States. There are a number of important caveats with respect to the apparent relationship between differences in employment and labor cost developments across countries.

These studies provide supporting material for the analysis and scenarios in the World Economic Outlook.

This paper focuses on the private nonfinancial sectors of the affected economies, financial liberalization provided households and businesses with greater access to credit markets. This contributed to the long period of expansion during the 1980s. Partly as a result of major changes to the financial systems, several industrial countries had a boom in asset markets associated with a period of asset accumulation, an unprecedented buildup of debt, a sharp increase in relative asset prices, and related increases in household wealth. The expansion in household financial activity in the United Kingdom during the 1980s was paralleled by a sizable boom in investment spending and an increase in corporate debt. The structure of balance sheets was also affected by mergers and acquisitions that led to a further expansion in corporate debt. New types of bank loans and accounts have prevented even greater disintermediation but have also reduced net interest margins because more deposits now earn market-related rates of return.