TY - JOUR T1 - Unemployment Duration JF - Journal of Human Resources JO - J Hum Resour SP - 156 LP - 191 DO - 10.3368/jhr.XXXVIII.1.156 VL - XXXVIII IS - 1 AU - John T. Addison AU - Pedro Portugal Y1 - 2003/01/01 UR - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XXXVIII/1/156.abstract N2 - This paper examines the determinants of unemployment duration in a competing risks framework with two destination states: inactivity and employment. The innovation is the recognition of defective risks. A polynomial hazard function is used to differentiate between two possible sources of infinite durations. The first is produced by a random process of unlucky draws, the second by workers rejecting a destination state. The evidence favors the mover-stayer model over the search model. Refinement of the former approach, using a more flexible baseline hazard function, produces a robust and more convincing explanation for positive and zero transition rates out of unemployment. ER -