The theory of international trade has paid scant attention to market institutions. Neither neoclassical theory nor new trade models typically specify the process by which supply and demand meet. Yet in the real world, intermediaries play a central role in materializing the gains from exchange...

This paper develops a simple model of international trade with intermediation. We consider an economy with two islands and two types of agents, farmers and traders. Farmers can produce two goods, but in order to sell these goods in centralized (Walrasian) markets, they need to be matched with a...

We consider a competitive search model where firms with vacancies choose between posting a wage ex-ante and bargaining it with workers ex-post. Workers apply for vacancies after observing firms' wage setting decisions, and differ in some observable but not verifiable qualifications that affect...

Housing transactions by owner-occupiers take two steps, purchase of a new property and sale of the old housing unit. This paper shows how the transaction sequence decision of owner-occupiers depends on, and in turn, affects housing market conditions in an equilibrium search-and-matching model of...

Do firms have the right incentives to innovate in the presence of productivity spillovers? This paper proposes an explicit model of spillovers through labor flows in a framework with search frictions. Firms can choose to innovate or to imitate by hiring a worker from a firm that has already...

In this Paper we define and estimate measures of labour market frictions using data on job durations. We compare different estimation methods and different types of data. We propose and apply an unconditional inference method that can be applied to aggregate duration data. It does not require...

We develop an urban-search model in which firms post wages. When all workers are identical, the Diamond paradox holds, i.e. there is a unique wage in equilibrium even in the presence of search and spatial frictions. This wage is affected by spatial and labour costs. When workers differ according...

The sustainability of Welfare States requires high employment/high participation to raise the tax base and avoid distortions. To analyse labour market participation decisions in a world with market frictions, we propose and solve a three-state macro model of the labour market. We show that...

Housing transactions by existing homeowners take two steps, a purchase of a new property and sale of the old housing unit. These two decisions are not independent, and their sequence may depend on the state of the housing market. This paper shows how the sequence of buyer-seller decisions...

An inherent difficulty in valuing controlling blocks of shares is the illiquidity of the market. We explore the pricing implications associated with the illiquidity of controlling blocks of shares in the context of a search model of block trades. The model considers several dimensions of...