J23 - Labor DemandReturn

Unemployment and Job Creation The aim of the paper is to formulate, estimate econometrically and analyse an empirically oriented labour market model in which a job creation process is described as determined by aggregate output demand. The model is estimated econometrically for Spain and the United Kingdom before and after the current economic crisis. Spain represents less developed countries in southern Europe while the United Kingdom is used as a representative of advanced European economies. The goal of the subsequent model analysis is (1) to investigate the strength of the aggregate demand transmission mechanism in these two different European countries, and (2) to analyse a connection between multiplicity of equilibrium unemployment rate and the strength of the aggregate demand transmission mechanism.

During the transition of the central planned economies to the market system unemployment has become one of the most serious problems. The article describes the current state of unemployment in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Using models of marginal effective tax rates developed by the OECD we discuss the influence of wage taxation, social security contributions and the benefit system on taxpayers' incomes and therefore on the motivation to work. The first part describes alternative indicators for measuring taxation of labor, analyses the methodology of measuring marginal effective tax rates and shows the calculated results. The next part discuses the influence of these effective tax rates and benefit systems on the taxpayers' net incomes and analyses possibilities of poverty traps for households, especially for low-wage taxpayers. The results show that efforts to reduce poverty hardly reduced work incentives in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.