A welfare analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) is performed in a general equilibrium job search model. Finitely-lived, risk-averse workers smooth consumption over time by accumulating assets, choose search effort when unemployed, and suffer disutility from work. Firms hire workers, purchase...

Through marriage, individuals can share some risks that would otherwise be uninsurable. In this paper, we ask how much idiosyncratic income risk can be diversified away through marriage contracts alone versus how much risk there remains for public unemployment insurance programs to alleviate. We...

We consider the dynamic relationship between product market entry regulation and equilibrium unemployment. The main theoretical contribution is combining a job matching model with monopolistic competition in the goods market and individual wage bargaining. Product market competition affects...

We examine product market regulation as an explanation for divergent US and continental European labor market performance. First, we show that the choice of bargaining regime is crucial for the effect of product market competition on unemployment rates, being substantial under collective and...

In a frictional labor market, when an employee receives an outside offer, his employer is naturally tempted to compete to retain him. Casual observation in the labor market, however, suggests that this type of ex post competition is rare. As a consequence, employers often let valuable employees...

We consider the dynamic relationship between product market entry regulation and equilibrium unemployment. The main theoretical contribution is combining a Mortensen-Pissarides model with monopolistic competition in the goods market and individual wage bargaining. Product market competition...