•   •

Unemployment duration, job search and labour market segmentation: Evidence from urban Ethiopia Pieter Serneels, University of East Anglia Download the Paper (PDF format) - June 1, 2008 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing. ABSTRACT: Although it is a common theoretical assumption that the chances to find a job fall with time in unemployment, this is not systematically confirmed by empirical evidence, and there is no evidence for developing countries. We develop a framework that allows us to test the four major explanations why we may observe non-negative duration dependence while genuine duration dependence is negative: financial support for the unemployed, active labour market policies, a change in the economy over time, and segmentation of the labour market into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ jobs. Using data for urban Ethiopia we observe a constant hazard while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, and find that labour market segmentation is the only convincing explanation. SUGGESTED CITATION: Pieter Serneels, "Unemployment duration, job search and labour market segmentation: Evidence from urban Ethiopia" (June 1, 2008). The Centre for the Study of African Economies Working Paper Series. Working Paper 297. http://www.bepress.com/csae/paper297