This paper first presents a dynamic model that features both real and monetary aspects of international trade and is capable of dealing with both full employment and secular unemployment. The model is then utilized to examine the effect of a tariff on the terms of trade, the trade pattern, real consumption, and employment of labor. It is shown that with full employment in both countries, a small tariff by the home country increases its real consumption at the expense of the foreign country by improving the terms of trade. These results however are reversed in the presence of unemployment in both countries. We also examine the asymmetric case and calibrate our model to evaluate numerically the effect of large tariff changes. The main finding is that the effects of tariffs on consumption are opposite in the absence and the presence of unemployment.

A central principle of basic income (BI) is unconditionality, contrasting with the prevailing trend in developed welfare systems that emphasises conditionality based on ‘activation’. While literature exists on attitudes about benefit conditionality and various BI solutions, there is limited understanding of the reasoning by individuals who have experienced a shift from conditionality to unconditionality within a BI framework. This gap highlights the need for more research on individual experiences related to these changing benefit principles. Utilising eighty-one in-depth participant interviews from the Finnish BI experiment targeting the long-term unemployed, we asked: how do experiment participants view benefit (un)conditionality after having received an unconditional basic income? Our results on the views of benefit conditionality among BI recipients proved to be quite varied. Some of the interviewees strongly supported principles of unconditionality, some basing their views on personal experience, while others opposed unconditionality, referring to their political beliefs, associating universal BI with leftist ideas, despite the Finnish experiment having been initiated by a conservative government. Interviews indicate that institutionalised norms and personal ideologies – key factors in welfare state research – significantly influence reasoning on (un)conditionality among participants in BI experiments, reflecting the work ethos of both traditional and current Nordic welfare state models.

This paper studies socioeconomic disparities in Mexico based on sexual orientation and gender identity using data from a nationally representative survey collected between 2021 and 2022 (N=44,189). It finds pronounced levels of self-reported discrimination and rejection among LGBTQ+ individuals throughout their lives. It also estimates that these groups’ raw rates of labor force participation and unemployment diverge from those of their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis provides novel insights into nuanced disparities within LGBTQ+ groups.

The Covid-19 pandemic has negatively affected labour markets, among other aspects of life. This study examines the impact of the discouraged worker effect during the pandemic, focusing on the Turkish labour market from 2018 to 2021. Although few studies exist on this topic, they rely on labour force participation rates, whereas our dataset includes direct questions and data specifically related to the discouraged worker effect, allowing for a microeconomic analysis. Probit regression results show that the discouraged worker effect was stronger during the pandemic, with job seekers being 1.6% more likely to become discouraged than before. Higher education levels generally reduce this likelihood, both before and during the pandemic. While age negatively correlates with discouragement, this effect diminishes with increasing age. Single women were more adversely affected than single men and married women than married men. Higher unemployment rates increase discouragement, as expected, while an increase in the unemployment rate has a greater effect on individuals during the pandemic period. Findings suggest that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on certain individuals, particularly with respect to education level and gender, while Türkiye’s societal structure may help explain the observed gender-based differences.

The EU has become increasingly responsible for the state of national economies over the last decades. Meanwhile, many observers have claimed that this increased responsibility has not translated into more accountability. In this article, we revisit this literature and analyse vote‐popularity functions before and after accession because it provides a situation when the EU is an incumbent and when it is not. Using Eurobarometer surveys from 2001 to 2011, which were carried out in the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007, we first show that individuals do not hold the EU accountable for macroeconomic performances before accession, but that they do after accession. Using European Election Studies surveys, we also indicate that the incumbent European Peoples’ Party is held accountable for the state of the economy in countries that are ruled by the EU, but not in countries that have just become EU members.

Typically, associations between being unemployed and policy attitudes are explained with reference to economic self‐interest considerations of the unemployed. Preferences for labour market policies (LMP) and egalitarian preferences are the prime example and the focus of this study. Its aim is to challenge this causal self‐interest argument: self‐interest consistent associations of unemployment with policy preferences are neither necessarily driven by self‐interest nor necessarily causal. To that end, this article first confronts the self‐interest argument with a broader perspective on attitudes. Given that predispositions (e.g., value orientations) are stable and influence more specific policy attitudes, it is at least questionable whether people change their policy attitudes simply because they get laid off. Second, the article derives a non‐causal argument behind associations between unemployment and policy attitudes, arguing that these might be spurious associations driven by individuals’ socioeconomic background. After all, the entire socioeconomic background of a person is simultaneously related to both the risk of getting unemployed (‘selection into unemployment’) and distinct political socialisation experiences from early childhood onwards. Third, this article uses methods inspired by a counterfactual account on causality to test the non‐causal claims. Analyses are carried out using the fourth wave of the European Social Survey and applying entropy balancing to control for selection bias. In only two of the 31 analysed countries do unemployment effects on egalitarian orientations remain significant after controlling for selection bias. The same holds for effects on active LMP attitudes with the exception of six countries. Attitudes towards passive LMP are to some degree an exception since effects remain in a third of the countries. Robustness checks and Bayes factor replications showing evidence for the absence of unemployment effects support the general impression from these initial analyses. After discussing this article's results and limitations, its broader implications are considered. On the one hand, the article offers a new perspective on the conceptualisation and measurement of unemployment risk. On the other hand, its theoretical argument, as well as its treatment of the resulting selection bias, can be broadly applied. Thus, this article can contribute to many other research questions regarding the (ir)relevance of individual life events for political attitudes and political behaviour.

What is the impact of unemployment on far-right party support? This article develops a framework that links unemployment to far-right party support, while taking into account both the heterogeneity of the workforce and the role of labour market policies. More specifically, we focus on unemployment as a driver of economic insecurity and examine its effect on outsider and insider labour market groups. We identify the extent to which two labour market policies—unemployment benefits and Employment Protection Legislation (EPL)—mediate the effect of unemployment on economic insecurity, thus limiting the impact of unemployment on far-right party support. We carry out a large N analysis on a sample of 14 Western and 10 Eastern European countries between 1991 and 2013. We find that unemployment only leads to higher far-right support when unemployment benefits replacement rates are low. The results with regard to the mediating effect of EPL are more complex as EPL only mediates the impact of unemployment when we take into account the share of foreign-born population in the country.