The labor market occupies center stage in modern theories of fluctuations. The most important phenomenon to explain and understand in a recession is the sharp decline in employment and jump in unemployment. This chapter for the Handbook of Macroeconomics considers explanations based on frictions...

A flexible labor margin allows households to absorb shocks to asset values with changes in hours worked as well as changes in consumption. This ability to partially offset wealth shocks by varying hours of work can significantly alter the household's attitudes toward risk, as shown in Swanson...

Commonly used frictional models of the labor market imply that changes in frictions have large effects on steady state employment and unemployment. We use a model that features both frictions and an operative labor supply margin to examine the robustness of this feature to the inclusion of a...

This paper analyzes a model that features frictions, an operative labor supply margin, and incomplete markets. We first provide analytic solutions to a benchmark model that includes indivisible labor and incomplete markets in the absence of trading frictions. We show that the steady state levels...

Recent findings have revived interest in the link between real wage rigidity and employment fluctuations, in the context of frictional labor markets. The standard search and matching model fails to generate substantial labor market fluctuations if wages are set by Nash bargaining, while it can...

A labor market with search and matching frictions, where wage setting is controlled by a monopoly union that follows a norm of wage solidarity, is found vulnerable to substantial distortions associated with holdup. With full commitment to future wages, the union achieves efficient hiring in the...

This paper evaluates the impact of slowing economic growth on labor market dynamism and misallocation. It provides a model of endogenous growth via imitation in a frictional labor market. The framework accounts for rich data on worker job-to-job transitions as well as stochastic and lifecycle...

This paper presents new tests of the permanent income hypothesis and other widely used models of household behavior using data from the labor market. We estimate the "excess sensitivity" of job search behavior to cash-on-hand using sharp discontinuities in eligibility for severance pay and...

International trade exposure affects job creation and destruction along the intensive margin (job flows due to expansions and contractions of firms' employment) as well as along the extensive margin (job flows due to births and deaths of firms). This paper uses 1992-2011 employment data from the...

This paper analyzes effects of population aging on the labor market and determines their broad implications for public policy. It takes Germany as an example, but it equally applies to the other large economies in Continental Europe. The paper argues that, alongside the amply discussed,...