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The efficiency of the dutch labour market in matching unemployment and vacancies

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Summary

A matching function specifies the relationship between the flow of filled job vacancies and the stocks of unemployed and job vacancies. This paper specifies and estimates the matching function of the Dutch labour market. It appears that this matching function is best described by a Cobb-Douglas function with constant returns to scale and coefficients of 0.4 on unemployment and 0.6 on vacancies. The matching function shifted at the end of the sixties and remained quite stable afterwards. This indicates that with a higher level of unemployment and lower level of job vacancies the Dutch labour market today is as efficient in generating a flow of filled vacancies as it was in the seventies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. P.O. Box 7161, 1007 MC, Amsterdam

    J. C. van Ours

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  1. J. C. van Ours
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The author wishes to thank Frank den Butter, Bernard Compaijen, Geert Ridder, Klaas Arie Springer and anonymous referees for their comments on a previous version of this article.

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van Ours, J.C. The efficiency of the dutch labour market in matching unemployment and vacancies. De Economist 139, 358–378 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01423571

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