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AbstractStudies have shown that citizens' risk-perceptions and risk-assessment are affected by large scale terrorist acts. Reported evidence shows that individuals are often willing to trade-off civil liberties for enhanced security particularly as a post-terrorist attack reaction as well as adopting more conservative views. Within this strand of the literature, this paper examines whether terrorism and in particular mass-casualty terrorist attacks affect citizens' political self-placement on the left-right scale of the political spectrum. To this effect the Eurobarometer surveys for 12 European Union countries are utilized and ordered logit models are employed for the period 1985–2010 with over 230,000 observations used in the estimations. On balance, the findings reported herein seem to be pointing to a shift in respondents' self-positioning towards the right of the political spectrum.

Terrorism is widely regarded as a public bad vis-à-vis security - a public good - affecting the subjective well-being of citizens. As studies have shown, citizens' risk-perceptions and risk-assessment are affected by large scale terrorist acts. Reported evidence shows that individuals are often willing to trade-off civil liberties for enhanced security particularly as a post-terrorist attack reaction as well as adopting more conservative views. Within this strand of the literature, this paper examines whether terrorism and in particular mass-casualty terrorist attacks affect citizens' political selfplacement on the left-right scale of the political spectrum. To this effect the Eurobarometer Surveys for twelve European Union countries are utilised and Ordered Probit models are employed for the period 1985-2010 with over 230 thousand observations used in the estimations. On balance, the findings reported herein seem to be pointing to a shift in respondents' self-positioning towards the right of the political spectrum.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine Okun's Law in European countries by distinguishing between the transitory and the permanent effects of output changes upon unemployment and by examining the effect of labor market protection policies upon Okun's coefficients.


Design/methodology/approach
– Quarterly data for 13 European Union countries, from the second quarter of 1993 until the first quarter of 2014, are used. Panel data techniques and Mundlak decomposition models are estimated.


Findings
– Okun's Law is robust to alternative specifications. The effect of output changes to unemployment rates is weaker for countries with increased labor market protection expenditures and it is more persistent for countries with low labor market protection.


Originality/value
– The paper provides evidence that the permanent effect of output changes upon unemployment rates is quantitatively larger than the transitory impact. In addition, it provides evidence that increased labor market protection mitigates the adverse effects of a decrease in output growth rate upon unemployment.

Resumen.Las investigaciones recientes sobre la relación entre desempleo y mortalidad arrojan resultados contradictorios. En este estudio se distingue entre efectos del desempleo inmediatos y a largo plazo, y se estima la relación utilizando datos agregados de 11 países europeos para el periodo 1971–2001. Los resultados revelan que los estudios anteriores según los cuales el aumento del desempleo conduce a un descenso de la mortalidad se referían a sus efectos inmediatos y que, a largo plazo, el desempleo se asocia con un aumento de la mortalidad de mucha mayor envergadura. Estos resultados son aplicables a casi todas las causas de mortalidad contempladas.

Résumé.Les recherches récentes sur la relation entre le chômage et la mortalité sont contradictoires. La présente étude utilise une méthodologie statistique pour décomposer les effets du chômage en effets temporaires et effets permanents, et évalue cette relation à l'aide de données agrégées collectées dans onze pays européens durant la période 1971–2001. Généralement, l'effet temporaire d'une hausse du chômage tend à faire baisser la mortalité, tandis que l'effet permanent tend à la faire augmenter. Il est important de noter que ce dernier est d'ordinaire plus fort que le premier. Ces résultats sont valables pour quasiment tous les indicateurs de la mortalité.

Abstract.Recent research on the relationship between unemployment and mortality is inconsistent. The statistical methodology used in this study decomposes the effect of unemployment on mortality into temporary and permanent effects and estimates the unemployment‐mortality relationship, using aggregate data from 11 European countries for the period 1971–2001. Decomposing the effect of unemployment in this way shows that while the temporary effect of an increase in unemployment is to lower mortality, the permanent effect is to increase it. Importantly, the permanent effect is generally much stronger than the temporary effect. These results hold true for nearly all mortality indicators studied.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of national unemployment rates on overall age and cause‐specific mortality rates in a panel sample of 13 European Union countries.Design/methodology/approachA fixed‐effects model is used to control for unobserved time‐invariant characteristics within countries. In addition, controls such as lifestyle risk factors, urbanisation and medical intervention indicators, for potential confounders are used.FindingsContrary to some recent evidence this study shows that there is a strong, positive relationship between adverse economic conditions and mortality. This is in contrast to findings about the US case.Originality/valueThis paper revisits the issue of the unemployment‐mortality relationship by utilising fixed effect models with controls for various indicators that are expected to affect mortality, in contrast to previous studies.