A New Light into Regional Unemployment Disparities in Belgium : Longitudinal Analysis of Grouped Duration Data

In this paper, we investigate whether the diverging evolution of unemployment in the two main regions of Belgium, Flanders and Wallonia, is driven by different evolutions in their average unemployment duration and/or their unemployment incidence. To that purpose, we proceed in two stages. In the first stage, we estimate a mixed proportional hazard model by region, and decompose variations inthe aggregate outflow rate over calendar time between a general effect, i.e.changes in the exit rate of all currently unemployed, and a composition effect,i.e. fluctuations in the average quality of entrant... Mehr ...