Market structure and spells of employment and unemployment: evidence from the construction sector in Egypt

This paper investigates the links between market structure and spells of employment and unemployment in the construction sector in Egypt using an augmented job search framework. Two key features of the model are the reservation frontier which allows for a trade-off between wages and expected duration of employment, and the dependency of unemployment durations on expected employment durations and expected wages. These, as well as conjectures concerning the influence of demand-side forces obtained from the expressions for the transition rates out of employment and unemployment, are examined using Weibull, log-logistic and generalized gamma parameterizations of the hazard rate. The parametric assumptions are exploited to resolve problems associated with selectivity and use of generated regressors.