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Economics of the Labour Market pp 1–19Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction

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Abstract

The world economies have gone through one of the worst depressions since the Great Depression of 1929. It appears that some of the OECD countries are now slowly recovering from the crisis, although many European countries have very high unemployment rates and their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has still not reached the pre-crisis levels. As Atkinson (2008) argues:

Government budgets are under stress, but citizens are going to expect that, if funds can be found to rescue banks, then governments can fund unemployment benefits and employment subsidies. If governments can take on the role of lender of last resort, then we should be willing to see government as the employer of last resort (emphasis in original).

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Junankar, P.N.(. (2016). Introduction. In: Economics of the Labour Market. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137555199_1

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