In light of the huge cross-country differences in job losses during the recent crisis, we study how labor market duality - meaning the coexistence of "temporary" contracts with low firing costs and "permanent" contracts with high firing costs - affects labor market volatility. In a model of job...

In many countries, Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) establishes different regulations for certain groups of workers who face more disadvantages in the labor market (young workers, women, unskilled workers, etc.) with the aim of improving their employability. Well known examples are the...

We estimate the effects of a significant increase in the minimum wage in Spain between 2004 and 2010 on the individual probability of losing employment, using a large panel of social security records. Our main finding is that older people experienced the largest increase in the probability of...

This article analyses changes in the occupational employment share in Spain for the period 1997-2012 and the way particular sociodemographics adapt to those changes. There seems to be clear evidence of employment polarisation between 1997 and 2012, which accelerates over the recession. Changes...

We study the size of fiscal multipliers in response to a government spending shock under different household leverage conditions in a general equilibrium setting with search and matching frictions. We allow for different levels of household indebtedness by changing the intensive margin of...

We study simple fiscal rules for stabilizing the government debt level in response to asymmetric demand shocks in a country that belongs to a currency union. We compare debt stabilization through tax rate adjustments with debt stabilization through expenditure changes. While rapid and flexible...

This paper considers a dynamic matching model with imperfectly observable worker effort. In equilibrium, the wage distribution is truncated from below by a no-shirking condition. This downward wage rigidity induces the same type of inefficient churning and "contractual fragility" as in Ramey and...

We test the Barro-Gordon model extended to allow for persistence in unemployment. First, we build an index of central bank independence and measures of persistence, and then we compare them with inflation performance in OECD countries. Our results show, as theory predicts, a robust negative...

Excessive levels of firing costs have been consistently blamed for the relatively weak employment in Europe, yet the concusions to be drawn from the literature are somewhat ambiguous. The paper re-examines the impact of adjustment costs under uncertainty.

This paper studies the joint behaviour of inflation and unemployment in Spain over the period 1964-1995. We analyze the implications both of full hysteresis in unemployment and high inflation persistence for inference regarding dynamic Phillips trade-offs and sacrifice ratios in the Spanish...