We provide a joint account of the unemployment and labor force participation patterns of older male workers during the past half-century, and of the role of institutions that have shaped their employment experience. To do so, we build an equilibrium model with labor market frictions,...

This paper studies the secular behavior of worker reallocation across occupations in the US labor market. In the empirical analysis, we use 45 years of microdata to construct consistent time-series and document that the fraction of employment reallocated annually across occupations is remarkably...

Fluctuations in firms' revenues reduce firms' viability and are costly from a social welfare point of view even when agents are risk neutral if (i) the decision to continue operating a firm is not efficient at the margin so that fluctuations shorten firms' life expectancy (because they increase...

This Paper derives optimal employment contracts when workers are risk-averse and there are employment and unemployment risks. Without income insurance, consumption rises during employment and falls during unemployment. Optimal employment contracts offer severance compensation to smooth...

This paper surveys recent work in equilibrium models of labor markets characterized by search and recruitment frictions and by the need to reallocate workers across productive activities. The duration of unemployment and jobs and wage determination are treated as endogenous outcomes of job...

Theoretical predictions of the impact of TFP growth on unemployment are ambiguous, and depend on the extent to which new technology is embodied in new jobs. We evaluate a model with embodied and disembodied technology, capitalization, and creative destruction effects by estimating the impact of...

Investment in inventories is known to be important for observed changes in GDP. However, inventory investment and the possibility that firms may fail to sell all goods are typically ignored in business cycle models. Using US data, the ability to sell is shown to be strongly procyclical. By...

Positive news about future productivity growth causes a contraction in most neoclassical business cycle models, which is counterfactual. We show that a business cycle model that incorporates the standard matching framework can generate an expansion. Although the wealth effect of an increase in...

This Paper explains the divergent behaviour of European and US unemployment rates using a job market-matching model of the labour market with an interaction between shocks and institutions. It shows that a reduction in TFP growth rates, an increase in real interest rates, and an increase in tax...

According to Ljungqvist and Sargent (1998), high European unemployment since the 1980s can be explained by a rise in economic turbulence, leading to greater numbers of unemployed workers with obsolete skills. These workers refuse new jobs due to high unemployment benefits. In this Paper we...