The labor search and matching model plays a growing role in macroeconomic analysis. This paper provides a critical, selective survey of the literature. Four fundamental questions are explored: how are unemployment, job vacancies, and employment determined as equilibrium phenomena? What...

Does the search and matching model fit aggregate U.S. labor market data? While the model has become an important tool of macroeconomic analysis, recent literature pointed to some failures in accounting for the data. This paper aims to answer two questions: (i) Does the model fit the data, and,...

This paper considers a real business cycle model with search frictions in the labor market and labor supply which is elastic along the extensive (participation) margin. Previous authors have found that such models generate counterfactually procyclical unemployment and a positively-sloped...

The standard New Keynesian model suffers from the so-called .macro-micro pricing conflict: in order to match the dynamics of inflation implied by macroeconomic data, the model needs to assume an average duration of price contracts which is much longer than what is observed in micro data. Here I...

Jim Tobin, who died on March 11, 2002 at the age of 84, was one of giants of economics of the second half of the twentieth century and the greatest macroeconomist of his generation. Tobin’s influence on macroeconomic theory is so pervasive - so much part of our professional ‘acquis’ - that...

To analyse the consequences of the changing economic structure of the UK, we need a set of statistics broken down by industry that are consistent with the whole economy measures available from the national accounts. The theory of growth accounting then provides a framework in which the...

As the tenth anniversary of EMU is approaching, a debate is underway as to whether the single currency has promoted or hindered convergence among the countries of the Eurozone. On the one hand, there is wide agreement on the fact that asymmetric shocks have subsided after the creation of the...

While instructional time is viewed as crucial to learning, little is known about the effectiveness of reducing absences relative to increasing the number of school days. In this regard, this paper jointly estimates the effect of absences and length of the school calendar on test score...

Are individuals more sensitive to losses than gains in macroeconomic growth? Using subjective well-being measures across three large data sets, we observe an asymmetry in the way positive and negative economic growth are experienced, with losses having more than twice as much impact on...

This paper considers how environmental policies should respond to macroeconomic downturns. It first explores the implications of the global economic downturn of 2008-09 for environmental policies, focusing in particular on the example of action against climate change. The arguments for and...