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...

I examine the dynamic evolutions of unemployment, hours of work and the service share since the war in the United States and Europe. The theoretical model brings together all three and emphasizes technological growth. Computations show that the very low unemployment in Europe in the 1960s was...

This paper presents information on labour market mobility in 23 EU countries, using Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) data over the period 1998-2008. More specifically, it discusses alternative measures of labour market churning; including the ease with which individuals can move between...

This paper investigates how labour supply trends might have affected the OECD labour markets in the last decades. It is argued that changes in supply cannot be considered as homogenous: they involve more young and more adult female workers, who are complements with skilled men and substitutes...

This paper explores a newly-available panel data set merging balance sheet and international trade transaction data for Belgium. Both imports and exports appear to be highly concentrated among few firms and seem to have become more so over time. Focusing on manufacturing, we find that facts...

This paper argues that skill-biased technical change has some deficiencies as a hypothesis about the impact of technology on the labor market and that a more nuanced view recently proposed by Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) is a more accurate description. The difference between the two hypotheses...

Over the last two decades, earnings in the United States increased at the top and at the bottom of the wage distribution but not in the middle - the intensely debated middle class squeeze. At the same time there was a substantial decline of employment in middle-skill production and clerical...

This paper shows, using data from both the US and the UK, that average plant size is larger in denser markets. However, many popular theories of agglomeration – spillovers, cost advantages and improved match quality – predict that establishments should be smaller in cities. The paper...

Growth of 'global cities' in the 1980s was supposed to have involved an occupational polarisation, including growth of low paid service jobs. Though held to be untrue for European cities, at the time, some such growth did emerge in London a decade later than first reported for New York. The...

This paper studies the impact of NAFTA on informality and real wages in Mexico. Using a dynamic industry model with firm heterogeneity, it is predicted that import tariff elimination could reduce the incidence of informality by making more profitable to some firms to enter the formal sector,...