This paper develops a simple competitive model of CEO pay. It appears to explain much of the rise in CEO compensation in the US economy, without assuming managerial entrenchment, mishandling of options, or theft. CEOs have observable managerial talent and are matched to assets in a competitive...

This paper examines the business cycle properties of business cycle models with search frictions and wage bargaining which rely not only on labor, but also on capital in the production function. In the presence of capital, the choice of bargaining framework matters, even under perfect...

We present a tractable equilibrium job search model of individual worker careers allowing for human capital accumulation, employer heterogeneity and individual-level shocks. We estimate our structural model on a panel of Danish matched employer-employee data and use it to analyze the...

This paper extends the classic dynamic employer learning model to a setting where there is uncertainty about the productivity value of general human capital, rather than about match-specific value. The focus is on rent extraction, which involves asymmetric common value auctions. Despite employer...

This paper analyzes the general equilibrium effects of capital tax when there is a mandated minimum wage. The analysis is conducted in an inter-temporal search model in which firms post wages as in Burdett and Mortensen (1998). A(binding) minimum wage provides alower support for the distribution...

This paper estimates a general stochastic process for labor income via indirect inference, by jointly using labor income data together with the information embedded in the dynamics of individual consumption. We extend earlier work in several directions. First, we do not restrict income shocks to...

This paper explores wage-setting in the presence of asymmetric information. Firms know their own productivity, while workers only know the distribution of productivity in the economy. Although there is unemployment in equilibrium, the labor market is competitive in the sense of Moen (1997):...

We develop a quantitative theory of gender differences in labor market participation, hours worked, labor turnover, and human capital accumulation. In our theory, young females expect to face higher labor turnover and to work less hours than males because they allocate time to child rearing. As...

Most real-world trade liberalizations decrease tariffs and increase quotas without completely abolishing them. We ask how decreases in tariffs and increases in quotas affect productivity in an economy with monopoly rights in the import-competing sector. We show that a reduction in a tariff can...