This chapter, prepared for the Handbook of Labor Economics, presents a comprehensive overview of how labor economists understand job search among the unemployed and how job search is shaped by unemployment insurance (UI) and active labor market policies (ALMP). It focuses on synthesizing key...

"This paper reviews the literature on employment and labor law. It is observed that all jurisdictions in the world have extensive employment and labor law, even though many economists recommend a reduction in legal restrictions. The review of the law illustrates that it has evolved in response...

Most governments are mandated to maintain their economies at full employment. We propose that the best marker of full employment is the efficient unemployment rate, u*. We define u* as the unemployment rate that minimizes the nonproductive use of labor--both jobseeking and recruiting. The...

A growing empirical literature attributes much of the productivity advantages of large, "superstar" firms to their adoption of best practice management techniques that allow them to better identify and use talented workers. The reasons for the incomplete adoption of these "structured management...

We provide a general formula for optimal unilateral policies in multi-sector, general-equilibrium Ricardian models with various widely adopted labor market specifications. Sector-specific tariffs are summarized by a matrix of partial supply elasticities and the share of Home's import in foreign...

This paper synthesizes the economics literature on skills and human capital, with a particular focus on higher-order capacities like social and decision-making skills. We review the empirical evidence on returns to human capital from both a micro and macro perspective, as well as the evidence on...

"We prove that the change in welfare of a representative consumer is summarized by the current and expected future values of the standard Solow productivity residual. The equivalence holds if the representative household maximizes utility while taking prices parametrically. This result justifies...