This paper estimates an identified VAR on US data to gauge the dynamic response of the job finding rate, the worker separation rate, and vacancies to monetary policy shocks. I develop a general equilibrium model that can account for the large and persistent responses of vacancies, the job...

What are the sources of rapid wage growth during a worker's early career? To address this question, I construct and estimate a model of strategic wage bargaining with on-the-job search to explore three different components of wages: general human capital, match-specific capital, and outside...

In developing economies, substantial economic activity takes place in the informal labor market, beyond the reach of government policy. Labor market policies, which by definition apply only to the formal-sector labor market, then have important spillover effects. The relative sizes of the...

This paper proposes a strategy to measure, in a unified setting, how the job finding probability and the job separation probability conditional on observable and unobservable individual characteristics varies over the business cycle. Recent papers by Shimer and Hall point out how new...

We first scrutinize and challenge Prescott's (2002, 2004) quantitative analysis of the role of differences in taxes in explaining cross-country differences in labor market outcomes, and then defend an alternative model that assigns an important role to cross-country differences in social...

We introduce a joint model of labor market search and firm size dynamics to explain the differential in labor market and productivity outcomes between the U.S. and the European Union. At the core, our model is a hybrid of the labor market search model by Mortensen and Pissarides (1994) and the...

This paper examines identification of search models in conditions with initial condition problems. This includes incomplete spells, as well as heterogeneity in reservation wages across workers. Applying the insights of our methodology allows us to reconcile two alternative approaches to...

The same policies or technological changes that affect the labor market can also affect the extent of criminal activities. For instance, while an increase in unemployment benefits can raise unemployment duration it may also reduce crimes by unemployed. Or, a technological change in the home...