Over the past two decades, technological progress in the United States has been biased towards skilled labor. What does this imply for business cycles? We construct a quarterly skill premium from the CPS and use it to identify skill-biased technology shocks in a VAR with long-run restrictions....

This paper analyzes the effects of short-time work (i.e., government subsidized working time reductions) on unemployment and output fluctuations. The central question is whether the rule based component (i.e., the existence of the institution short-time work) and the discretionary component...

We build a RBC endogenous separation matching model and introduce efficiency wages along the lines of Akerlof (1982). While the standard endogenous separation matching model reveals shortcomings in explaining correlations and volatilities jointly, this approach performs reasonably well along...

We implement capital in an endogenous separations New Keynesian matching model. In contrast to the vintage capital theory, we suggest a more general approach, such that workers have unrestricted access to a proportional share of the capital stock. We find that the introduction of capital...

This paper investigates the role of staggered wages and sticky prices in explaining stylized labor market facts. We build on a partial equilibrium search and matching model and expand the model to a general equilibrium model with sticky prices and/or staggered wages. We show that the core model...

This paper provides a survey of the recent literature about firing costs and discusses the transmission channels of firing costs in a partial equilibrium context. In addition, we expand our analysis two types of firing costs in a New Keynesian model with purely endogenous separations. We further...

This papers analyzes the role of the extensive vis-à-vis the intensive margin of labor adjustment in Germany and the United States. The contribution is twofold. First, we provide an update of older U.S. studies and confirm the view that the extensive margin (i.e., the adjustment in the number...

Can the standard search-and-matching labor market model replicate the business cycle fluctuations of the job finding rate and the unemployment rate? In the model, fluctuations are prominently driven by productivity shocks which are commonly interpreted as technology shocks. I estimate different...

This paper documents a puzzling fact, namely that there is a significant negative relation between employment protection legislation and the usage of the intensive margin of labor market adjustments. We then make use of a Real Business Cycle model and introduce search and matching frictions as...

Empirical evidence indicates that lay-off costs consist of two elements, namely firing costs and severance payments. This paper investigates business cycle and steady state effects of firing costs and severance payments and discusses the differences. We find that severance payments imply a lower...