Youth as Actors of Change? The Cases of Morocco and Tunisia

In the last decades, ‘youth’ has increasingly become a fashionable category in academic and development literature and a key development (or security) priority. However, beyond its biological attributes, youth is a socially constructed category and also one that tends to be featured in times of drastic social change. As the history of the category shows in both Morocco and Tunisia, youth can represent the wished-for model of future citizenry and a symbol of renovation, or its ‘not-yet-adult’ status which still requires guidance and protection can be used as a justification for increased social control and repression of broader social mobilisation. Furthermore, when used as a homogeneous and undifferentiated category, the reference to youth can divert attention away from other social divides such as class in highly unequal societies

Aggregate Matching Efficiency: A Stochastic Production Frontier Approach, France 1990-1994

We evaluate the determinants of aggregate matching efficiency changes through a stochastic Cobb-Douglas production frontier model. The efficiency coefficient is represented by a stochastic function of variables meant to capture workers and firms characteristics. The model is estimated on French data covering twenty-two regions from March 1990 till February 1995. Our estimates suggest that aggregate matching efficiency has decreased steadily in the early nineties. There are also wide cross-regional differences. On average, about 30% of the variations of efficiency observed across time and regions can be related to changes in the explanatory variables used in the model. The most important explanatory variables are the proportion of youngsters, females and immigrants in the stock of job seekers. Long-term unemployment has a significant negative effect, population density a significant positive one. The huge decline in the proportion of permanent job offers has apparently little effect on matching efficiency

Matching in local labor markets: a stochastic frontier approach

Matching function, Technical efficiency, Stochastic frontier analysis, Local labor markets, Heterogeneity, J24, J64,