Unemployment, macroeconomic policies and flexibility of the labor market - Argentina and Mexico in the nineties

This paper compares the divergent unemployment experiences in Argentina and Mexico in the 1990s, examining in detail the remarkable contrasts in the adjustment of the labor market in these two countries that occur despite equally striking similarities in the evolution of a number of macroeconomic variables and external economic shocks, The paper focuses on the role of macroeconomic policies and the type of industrial restructuring in these developments and considers to what extent the divergent unemployment experiences can be explained by differences in the institutional characteristics of the labor market.