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Abstract/short description:
The article tries to analyze an incident from the 1950s in Bolivia. In June 1956, an Aymara peasant and activist named Laureano Machaka with a group of followers announced the creation of Aymara Republic in the Camacho Province. This took place in a period of significant turmoil in Bolivia, when political infighting between right- and left-wing groups has led to total disorder in La Paz. The creation of the Aymara Republic can be related to the rise of the peasant and Aymara movements. The Republic's existence was cut short, as Laureano Machaka was killed later in the same year.
Short description written by Michał Gilewski

Behind similar unemployment rates in the United States and Portugal hide two very different labor markets. Unemployment duration is three times longer in Portugal than in the United States. Symmetrically, flows of workers into unemployment are three times lower in Portugal. These lower flows come in roughly equal proportions from lower job creation and destruction, and from lower worker flows given job creation and destruction. A plausible explanation is high employment protection in Portugal. High employment protection makes economies more sclerotic; but because it affects unemployment duration and worker flows in opposite directions, the effect on unemployment is ambiguous. (JEL E2, J3, J6)

In this paper we investigate the process of job search, using a unique, large-scale data set for Portugal that allows us to assess the effect of job search methods on escape rates from unemployment and, in a new departure, the impact of job-finding methods used by the unemployed on earnings. In each case, the characteristics of workers receive careful attention. In addition, the effectiveness of the job search process is evaluated in terms of the periodicity of the resulting job match. Some emphasis is accorded the role of the public employment agency which, despite its frequency as a search vehicle, is found to have a low hit rate and to lead to low-paying jobs. Such jobs are also shorter lasting, only partly because they are more likely to be of a fixed-term nature. The policy backdrop is provided by the "employment chapter" of the Treaty of Amsterdam. Given our results, some concern naturally arises as to the capacity of the public employment agency to meet the targets set under European employment initiatives.

ABSTRACTThis paper uses a unique Portuguese dataset to examine the effect of access to unemployment benefits (UBs) and their maximum potential duration on escape rates from unemployment. In examining the time profile of transitions out of unemployment, the principal contributions of the paper are twofold. First, it provides a detailed state space of potential outcomes: open‐ended employment, fixed‐term contracts, part‐time work, government‐provided jobs, self employment, and labour force withdrawal. Second, it is able to exploit major exogenous discontinuities in the maximum duration of unemployment benefits to identify disincentive effects. While confirming strong disincentive effects, it is shown that use of an aggregate hazard function regression model compounds very different and even contradictory effects of the determinants of unemployment.