This paper critically evaluates the contribution of labor economics and industrial relations research to our understanding of the impact of government labor market regulation. Recent theoretical and empirical literature is analyzed for four major policies: (a) workplace safety and health; (b)...

We build a three-state general equilibrium model of the aggregate labor market that features both standard labor supply forces and labor market frictions. Our model matches key features of the cyclical properties of employment, unemployment, and nonparticipation as well as those of gross worker...

This chapter assesses how models with search frictions have shaped our understanding of aggregate labor market outcomes in two contexts: business cycle fluctuations and long-run (trend) changes. We first consolidate data on aggregate labor market outcomes for a large set of OECD countries. We...

Shimer's calibrated version of the Mortensen-Pissarides model generates unemployment fluctuates much smaller than the data. Hagedorn and Manovskii present an alternative calibration that yields fluctuations consistent with the data, but this has been challenged by Costain and Reiter, who say it...

This paper analyzes a model that features frictions, an operative labor supply margin, and incomplete markets. We first provide analytic solutions to a benchmark model that includes indivisible labor and incomplete markets in the absence of trading frictions. We show that the steady state levels...

Employer-sponsored group pension plans offer an unusual window into long-term employment relationships. This is because the pension promise is documented in a set of explicit statements regarding future payment and employment agreements between workers and their employers. In this paper, we show...

This paper examines the likely effects of the aging of the baby boom on labor force attachment, unemployment, and wages. Labor market trends between now and 2020 are the focus of analysis, when the majority of the baby boom generation will confront its retirement decision. We begin by reviewing...

Pensions have played a key role in the transformation of the way workers are paid in the US labor market This paper reviews and synthesizes what is known about the form and function of employer-provided pensions, and identifies areas where further information is most needed. for increasing our...

This paper assesses the impact of the post WWII baby boom on relative wages, when this baby boom cohort becomes the oldest segment of the workforce. Time series data are used to estimate a model of the demand for workers in eight age/sex groupings. Using these estimates, we simulate relative...

We document a robust negative relationship between the log of mean annual hours in an occupation and the standard deviation of log annual hours within that occupation. We develop a unified model of occupational choice and labor supply that features heterogeneity across occupations in the return...